Nurse Jackal
by The Invader Androgynous
Summary: Akabane should have paid more attention to the words in the fortune cookie. Or, perhaps, he should not have given in to Himiko's teasing. Whatever the case, someone is out to teach him a lesson in being careful what he wishes for...
1. Who made a wish? Wasn't me!

There is a woman in the dark underworld of transporting known as Lady Poison. She is beautiful, deadly, smart. She is everything you wish you were, and so much more. At that moment, however, she hardly felt that way. For you see, she was sitting in a bar where many of the transporters were known to associate, ducking a flying beer can.

"I hate this bar," Himiko protested, running her fingers through her hair to make sure the can didn't drip on her during its trajectory across the room. She honestly wouldn't come there, were it not a good hub for clients and transporters to find one another. Lately, jobs had been a bit scarce, so she was forced to wait with the rest of the bottom of the barrel for something to come her way.

By bottom of the barrel, though, she didn't mean transporters who weren't any good. She meant a transporter who was _too _good- Akabane Kuroudo, the most hated and vile figure in the transporting world. She was one of the few who actually dared take up a seat beside him, which she did because he offered a sort of sense of protection. There was this three foot "no fly" zone around him as far as thrown objects and drunken men were concerned. There had been ever since someone had hit him in the back of the head with a bottle. No one had seen that person since.

"Ginji told me I should become a retriever, again," she smirked, throwing it into a casual discussion about her last transporting job. She knew Ginji's harsh words got underneath Akabane's skin from the way his fingers twitched when the boy's name was mentioned in the absence of Ginji's physical presence. "He said he was _sure_ Ban could be talked into adding a third Get Backer," she smiled, taking a sip of her drink. That was another added benefit of sitting next to Akabane- no one dared taunt her about the fact that she didn't drink alcohol. Still, she was in a bad mood because Ban and Ginji had cost her yet another job, and she was taking her frustrations out by unwisely teasing Dr. Jackal.

"You realize," Akabane said softly, his face hidden behind his hat. "That Ginji-kun only makes those offers to you because you are female."

Himiko snorted. "Right. Are you suggesting that Ginji would want _you_ to become a retriever as well, if only you were a girl? Are you forgetting that he considers you one of the worst monsters to ever sweep across this world?"

Akabane laughed very gently at Himiko's comment. "Ginji-kun's world view is a little bit narrow if he honestly believes me more terrible than the greatest dictators the world has known."

"Well, he does, whether that is a limited world view or not."

"He would be willing to forgive everything I had ever done to him- if only I had a shape like this," he said, making a womanly curve in the air with his cigarette. The shape lingered for a moment before drifting away, misshapen.

Himiko raised an eyebrow, as in her opinion he almost already did have an hourglass figure, with the way his coat made his waist seem smaller and his hips seem bigger than they really were. Of course, even Himiko didn't dare bring such a thing up to him. Generally, there were no subjects he was really touchy about, but she wasn't about to go trying to find one. "Right," she said. "Ginji would forgive you for brutally slaughtering enemies at a lower fighting class than you if you could bounce your way out of the situation."

"I believe that he would. How horribly sexist my dear Ginji-kun is."

"I don't think Ginji is sexist at all, but seeing as how you are distinctly _not_ female, we'll never know now, will we?"

"I am afraid so, Himiko-chan. It is a good thing for you, because you know I am right."

Himiko rolled her eyes. How someone could have an argument with her without ever raising his voice above a barely-audible whisper was beyond her. She'd heard Akabane shout before, and when he did, his voice was at the volume that the level most people she knew usually talked at. "If you say so, Jackal. If you say so, but like how many licks it takes to the center of the Tootsie Roll pop… the world will never know." She sighed. "No one here is hiring tonight. You want to walk home with me?"

"Whatever you want, Lady Poison," he shrugged, throwing a handful of bills out on the table and sliding off of the bar stool. He extended the crook of his arm to her, acting the part of the perfect gentleman. She put her hands quickly in her pockets.

"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not hold hands," she said. "Someone might get the wrong idea about us."

The two of them disappeared out of the bar together, their dark clothes making it seem as though the night had swallowed them up as soon as they were beyond the neon glow of the bar. Back at the bar, the cloaked figure who had been sitting on the other side of Akabane smirked, a smile spreading across teeth so finely sharpened they could almost be fangs. Their fingers rested on a piece of paper taken from a fortune cookie. The words said, in small blue type, "Be careful what you wish for, for you just might get it."

Hours passed by, during which Akabane escorted Himiko home and then returned to his own apartment. He lived on the second floor of an apartment complex that had been situated like a motel, with the doors facing outward to the environment rather than inward to a common hallway. It was a small apartment, one room with a cubicle-like division that served as a kitchen and another cubicle-like division that contained a toilet and a tiny square of raised tile with a hose hanging above it that served as a makeshift shower.

Akabane needed no more in the way of basic necessities to get by; he ate most of his meals while out on jobs, and spent very little time in his residence when he wasn't sleeping. He spent far more time either on jobs or looking for jobs, and what time wasn't reserved for working was reserved for training for working.

He yawned as he fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, his fingers oddly clumsy. He was unusually tired for having spent the entire night at the bar, waiting to be hired. Maybe the bartender had accidentally used a stronger proof alcohol than he was used to. It hadn't tasted off, but he had been nursing a cigarette all night and remembered very little besides the taste of paper and smoke.

Too tired to bother with pajamas, and with the weather being unseasonably hot, he chose to strip down to his boxers and crawl beneath the sheets on the matt, hugging his pillow with one thin arm as he rested. With that, night passed into day.

Around one in the afternoon, a delivery truck pulled up front of Akabane's apartment complex. Not "delivery" in the sense that Akabane did deliveries, but delivery in the postal service sense. Akabane, being the sort who could not be bothered with the time it took to purchase groceries from a store, used an internet service that would deliver his food-product needs right to his apartment door.

The delivery boy sighed, pulling the smallish bundle out of his truck. It hadn't been a very good day. The packing service had messed up an order from a shrewish older woman. She'd felt that, even though he kept telling her that he wasn't the one who had filled her order, he was the one who definitely needed to hear about how someone else had screwed up. Just promising that he'd get the correct items sent hadn't been enough, oh no. She'd insisted on having a long talk with his supervisors on his cell phone, using his daytime minutes, first. Then after some more verbal berating, she'd let him go only for his next customer to fume at him about how late he was.

"I can't take any more surprises today," he whined, dragging the bundle up the stairs to the second floor. "Apartment 205… this is it," he said, knocking solidly on the door. "Please, don't let this one yell at me as well."

Akabane raised his head, yawning. At some point in the night, his pillow had ended up on top of his head, so it looked as though he had a marshmallow hat on. He looked at his clock, grunting. He'd been up past 5 am… who the heck would be waking him before he'd gotten a full night's sleep, and knocking at his door no less?

He staggered out of his bed, wrapping a towel around his waist and yawning. He didn't bother putting his glasses on yet, stumbling over to the door. He was too tired to bother turning on the lights, as he didn't want to deal with the light hurting his eyes. "Who is it?" he yawned, rubbing his fingers through his bed mangled hair.

"Delivery from Ja-pan, your best bread and grocery supplier in the area!" he said, trying not to sound like he was sick of the Ja-pan bread joke already. It didn't help that an anime had recently been released whose name used the same pun. It only meant more people felt obligated to tell him what a dumb joke they thought it was.

"Oh," Akabane yawned, unlatching the three locks he'd had installed on the door besides the lock it had already come with. "I forgot I ordered," he commented, opening the door wide.

The boy started, head and shoulders turning brilliantly red and he held his clipboard up in front of his face. "Pl… please! I can only take cash or credit! Only cash or credit! My boss will get mad at me if I don't come back with the right amount of money!"

Akabane rubbed his eyes, wondering what the heck was wrong with the boy. He should have worn his glasses; all he could tell was that a slightly fuzzy youth with a clipboard held up so that it looked as though he had no head was trembling on his doorstep. "What are you babbling about?" he asked, picking up his wallet and dividing out the correct payment. "Here is your cash."

"Can you… can you attach it to the clipboard?" the boy asked, continuing to shake. "I don't want to come out from behind here."

Akabane rolled his violet eyes and did so, picking up the bundle of groceries lying at the trembling boy's feet. He checked to make sure nothing was broken when the boy had suddenly dropped the entire packaging, noticing the trembling boy occasionally peeking out from behind the board. What was the matter with him? He was acting like he'd never seen a man with scars on his chest before. Maybe it was the tattoo. People had jumped to the conclusion that he was a yakuza before because of it.

"Nothing seems to be broken," he said. "Is it appropriate to tip you?"

The boy's heart nearly jumped into his chest. "Ye-yes, but I really am behind on my route…"

Akabane stuck another few bills to the clipboard. "There. Try to relax, or you might get into a traffic accident," he commented, shutting the door solidly behind himself.

The boy lowered the clipboard, face absolutely crimson and blood oozing from his nose. "I do believe in karma, I do," he muttered.  
"Weird boy," Akabane commented, just throwing the entire bundle of groceries into his fridge. He'd sort them out after his shower. He wanted to get the smell of the bar off of his skin. He dropped the sheet and his boxers where they lay, entering his "bathroom" and pulling the plastic curtain that separated it from the rest of his apartment. He yawned again, wondering why in the world he would be as tired as he was. He could hardly think straight, let alone drag himself out of bed. Maybe the shower would wake him up…

He stumbled into the shower, shivering at first until the water warmed up. He shut his eyes, waiting for it to heat up, still yawning. He hoped he didn't fall asleep and drown in two inches of water. That would be one of the most humiliating ends for the infamous Dr. Jackal he could imagine.

When the water was warm enough, he stepped into the spray. He'd often thought about getting a shower that was more advanced than a garden hose with a flower water head on it attached to a faucet in the side of the wall, but it served its purpose. As he started cleaning himself, he reached down to wash something most men generally consider to be very important to them… and discovered that something was very, very wrong. For something was very, very, very, very missing.

He scrambled out of the shower, sliding on the wet tile and nearly falling and hitting his head on the toilet. He rushed into the next room, where a dirty mirror hung above an ancient sink. His hands fumbled frantically for the light switch, finally hitting it.

The light flooded the room, causing him to let out a lit cry in protest and cover his eyes. It was too bright for someone who had been up so few minutes. Slowly, he pried his fingers off his face one at a time, exposing his eyes gradually to the light. When he finally pried the last finger off his face and looked at himself in the mirror, his shriek was so loud that birds on the roof took flight in alarm.


	2. Safety Pins to the Rescue

Akabane stumbled from his bathroom, his body stiff like a zombie. "I am having one of those dreams where you think you are awake," he muttered, returning to his bed and pulling his sheets over his head. "That is all. I will go back to sleep, and when I wake up, everything will be normal… everything will be normal…"

About five minutes after Akabane had fallen into a deep, exhausted sleep, the super arrived at the door. He knocked, sound reverberating through the apartment. "Hey, I got a call that someone here screamed. Is everything okay? Hello?"

Getting no answer, the super knitted his brow in concern. They did not exactly live in the best of neighborhoods, and one of his fellow landlords had been sued for not coming to the screams of a girl who had been murdered in the building. The fellow super had lost well over ten million yen in that case, so Akabane's super was not taking any chances. He pulled the master key to the door off his belt and let himself in.

The turning on of the lights caused Akabane to sit upright in surprise, grabbing for his glasses. The super stared at Akabane; Akabane stared back in response. The super then threw his hands over his eyes, stammering in humiliation. "I-I-I am so sorry! Someone in this apartment screamed, and no one answered when I asked if everything was okay! I am sorry!" he shouted, bowing repeatedly out of humiliation.

Akabane looked down, and then let out an inhuman squeaking noise before crossing his arms over his newly-found massive chest, not knowing what else to do. It was okay, it was just a dream! Didn't being naked in dreams mean that one was afraid of showing their true self? He never showed his true self to anyone. Yes, it made perfect sense that he would dream about being naked. Why he was dreaming he was a naked woman, he had no idea.

The landlord bolted backwards out of the room, still apologizing so quickly that words blending into a bizarre hybrid of the words "I am so sorry" and came out as "Ismsmorry." He slammed the door shut so quickly that the plaster cracked. It was a good thing that this was a dream, or Akabane would have to talk to the super about how that distinctly would _not_ be taken out of his security deposit.

Since it didn't seem like the dream was going to be ending any time soon, he crawled back out from under the sheets and did what most men would do upon finding themselves confronted with a chest that rivaled Hevn-san's… after getting over the initial shock that is. Namely, he poked them. Then, he lifted them up and let them go to see if they'd bounce like the video game girls did. He was vaguely disappointed when they didn't. What a rip-off. He tried smashing them together, then letting go to see what would happen. After that, he just returned to poking and curiously touching.

He was already bored. Boobs, it seemed, were not as fun when they were your own. Nothing to do but wait until he woke up, it seemed. He sighed. The dream had been shocking at first, then kind of arousing, but now it was just boring. "Time to wake up, Akabane-san," he said. Yes, he knew it was strange to address himself by his family name, and even _stranger_ to address himself with the -san, but he had gotten so used to being called that, that he hardly even acknowledged Kuroudo as his first name anymore.

His cell phone lit up, ringing merrily. He looked over at it, raising an eyebrow. Who would be calling him in the middle of a dream? Figuring he had better play along, he picked it up.

"Are you having fun with my gift?" a female voice asked, surprising him.

"Who is this?" he asked.

"Don't you remember the fortune cookie you got at the bar last night? 'Be careful what you wish for?' You left it on the bar. You really should have picked up after yourself."

"That isn't the question I asked you," he said, getting angry. "Who is this?" He realized the question was stupid; whoever they were, it wasn't really them. It was just his mind's rendition of them.

"You male transporters don't realize how easy you have it compared to us women. We have to earn respect by working like slaves, and then our credit is handed to our male partners. Whereas a man like yourself can just strut into the room like a peacock and mindlessly kill a few pawns, and suddenly you are the greatest thing on this earth since butter in a tube!"

Akabane looked down at the phone, confused. "Butter in a tube was… universally recognized as a bad idea…"

"… Shut up. That wasn't the point. The point is, I hope you enjoy your new body. You'll find that being a woman in the transporting field isn't worth the price of one man's affection." With that, the line went dead. Akabane threw his phone down, frustrated.

"I want to wake up now," he complained, drawing his knees up to his chest as best he could with his chest in the way.

After it slowly became apparent that the horror was not just a dream, and that he was going to have to do something about it, Akabane decided to get dressed and head back to the bar. It was the most logical starting place to find the person responsible, make them change him back, and then use their guts for wall hangings.

That was when he discovered that his assailant was, so to speak, quite through. For he had not just traded something down there for something up there; his entire body had changed. His pants were too long, dripping at least three inches past his ankles. They were also too big around the waist and very, very tight around his hips. His feet were too small for his shoes, and his socks bunched up.

The pants, at least, could be fixed with a gaudy amount of safety pins around his waist and his ankles. His shirt, however… that was a different story. "Why do I only have skin tight clothing?" he asked himself out loud, frustrated. The shoulders and arms were so loose that they hung in bunches on him, but the chest was stretches to its absolute limits, showing skin between the buttons in some places. If only he wore bigger shirts, this wouldn't be a problem…

He put his coat over his clothes, only to find that it sagged horribly around his shoulders and was also inches too long for his new, curved legs. The waist no longer sat even with his navel. It didn't even help the button issue, as it was already open in the front. The only thing he could think of doing was safety-pinning his tie down to the front of his shirt and praying the buttons would hold. He dug out a pair of sandals. Still too big, but at least he wouldn't look like he was wearing clown shoes like he had with his regular dress boots.

Then came the issue of his hat, which was too large for his female head. The brim ended up landing even with his eyes, making it impossible to see out of. He tried stuffing it with washcloths, but then it just looked as though it were oddly hovering about on top of his head, due to the way it bounced around. Eventually, much to his chagrin, he had to abandon the hat and just hope that he didn't look _too_ ridiculous walking around in obviously oversized clothing.

He peered both ways before leaving his apartment. He was very cautious as he locked up. However, as he reached the stairs, yet another problem became evident to him… yes, his breasts did bounce. Boy, did the bounce. He could actually feel them rubbing against the thin material of his dress shirt, becoming chaffed by the fabric on the inside of his coat.

What was he supposed to do, though? It wasn't as if he had any large-sized women's bras lying around his apartment, just in case he should wander across a need for them. As he continued down the stairs, trying to walk slowly and with posture, it became more and more apparent that he wasn't going to be able to get by without a change of clothing, especially support.

He wondered if it would be obvious if he walked with his arms crossed over his chest, like someone who was in a bad mood would. True, not many people actually walked around that way, but it would make him feel less self-conscious than he did without any support at all. He tried several positions for his arms, finally giving in that there was no position to hold them at that looked completely natural, only ones that looked less unnatural than others. He chose the best position he could and continued walking down the street, hoping his face wouldn't give away exactly how humiliated he felt.

Getting to the club, however, would require riding the subway. He had never paid attention to the No Groping signs before, but all of the suddenly they seemed surprisingly relevant. He glanced back and forth, eyes open for anyone who might have less than pure intentions at heart. Fortunately, it was after school and work for most people had started, and he could stay a good distance away from most people, if not an arm's worth away from everyone.

His keen hearing picked up on snickering coming from behind her. "That girl is so wearing a man's outfit," one snickered.

"Walk of shame, I guess," the other one snorted.

"With implants like those, she must be a real slut," the other one whispered.

Akabane retained his composure. They were insects, and not even ones that it would be particularly entertaining to crush. Take the high road, Akabane, he thought to himself. Take the high road.

He stepped off the train at the right stop only to find himself being halted by a security guard in a uniform. "I'm very sorry, but we got a warning of potential terrorist activity in this area. You'll have to pass through the metal detectors before we can let you go on."

Metal detectors, huh? No problem. Ceramic knives didn't show up on metal detectors, after all. Another added benefit of having changed his fighting style to suit battling with the Thunder Emperor, he guessed. It wasn't until after they were running the wand over him and it was going off, however, that he realized one vital fact… safety pins are distinctly made out of metal.

"Have you removed all spare change from your pockets?"

"I have," he explained, "but my clothes do not fit right and I have to hold them together with safety pins…"

The security officer shook his head. "Please, step over to the area with the white cloth hangings. They will be able to help you there."

"You are letting other people go through without stopping them!" he protested, pointing.

"We got a description of our perpetrator, and I am afraid you resemble the description. Now please, step willingly over to the tents or I can 'escort' you over there. Trust me; going of your free will is preferable."

He grumbled in protest, knowing he could slip easily through the lines with his abilities but not wanting to display them in public, before walking over to the tented area. "They said I had to come over here because metal on my clothes was setting off the metal detector," he said, finding himself reaching absently for the hat he wasn't wearing. He usually pulled on it when he was frustrated or irritated.

A woman stood up and gestured around to the other side of the tented off area. She picked up her wand. "I am really sorry about this, but you understand the need for public security, I'm sure," she said. "Please, remove your coat."

He did as told only after making a rather irritated face at her. "Hold up your arms," she said, running the metal wand over his chest. "Are you wearing an under wire bra?"

"I am not wearing any bra. The safety pins are setting it off."

"I am really sorry about this, but wearing clothes that are obviously too big for one's body and unseasonable coats are two of the signs we have to watch out for," she said, continuing to check to make sure every metal blip was actually a safety pin. After a few uncomfortable few minutes of her going over his clothes, it was determined that he was no threat beyond all the safety pins he was wearing. As he emerged from the tent, however, a man with a television camera immediately blocked his path.

"This has been a demonstration of the intrusive methods our government _could_ use to search citizens with no other provocation than the way they are dressed. Please, tell our TV audience how you are feeling.

"You mean that I had to go through that humiliation just so that you could prove a political point?" he asked, surprisingly calm for what he was feeling inside.

"We are trying to make people more aware of the dangers of government control," the cameraman explained.

Akabane found his hands curled into fists. No, using knives on a man holding a camera was definitely not a good idea. He let his hands relax. "No comment," he said shortly, pushing the cameraman out of the way and brushing past him. The nerve of some people and what they would do just to make a political point!

He arrived at the bar in good time despite the hold up, only to discover that he had made too good of time. He had forgotten it was a weekend, and thus, the bar did not open for another two hours. At least that would give him time to find a place to buy some clothes that actually fit.

He wandered the area before settling on what looked like a store that was high-priced enough for his elaborate tastes, and yet still within his range. Mainly, he chose the store for the beautiful black corset-waist trench coat that was hanging in the window. He stepped cautiously inside, looking nervously around. "Hello?" he asked, seeing no clerks. That was unusual. Usually, a clerk was there to overly cheerily greet him the minute he entered a store.

Then, right at once, two women and a man appeared from the back. He recognized one of the women instantly. "You are the woman from the fake check point," he said angrily, pointing an accusing finger at her.

"So are you," the woman answered. She was still wearing her police uniform, but now that he was inside the store, he could tell that it was a fake uniform. He wished he'd noticed that back at the checkpoint and saved himself the trouble. "We were just talking about you and how bad I felt for you."

He snorted. "How bad you felt for me?"

"You've obviously got style, but nothing you are wearing _fits"_ she said, waving a hand at him. "I was just telling the staff about how much I wanted to give you a make-over," she said, grinning and edging towards him.

Akabane suddenly felt extremely apprehensive and began backing away towards the door. "I think I had better shop elsewhere."

The girl grabbed his arm. "Don't go, cute girl. We aren't going to hurt you."

The other girl grabbed his other arm, their grip surprisingly tight. "Come on inside!"

His fingers twitched, ready to draw his blades, when his eyes glanced upward. Security cameras, hell. His hands fell limp. He made it a point never to use his blades on camera, lest a picture of his face end up associated with his ability to leave a trail of bodies all marked by the letter J.

The women tightened their grip even as he struggled against them, finding that his strength seemed to have drained from his body. This was not his day at all.


	3. Venus Fly Trap

The girls dragged poor, unwilling Akabane to the back of the store and into a room marked "private sessions only" in brilliant silver paint. He tried to plant his feet, but the sandals he was wearing had absolutely no grip to them whatsoever. If it hadn't been for the security cameras… He still didn't understand why he couldn't break free of their grip and run, though. They had holds on him like pro-wrestlers, but he should have been able to get free. He'd broken better holds than theirs before.

"Let's see," the cop said, running a finger along her lips. "I like the 'chick in men's clothes' thing you've got going on, and this is a gorgeous coat. I don't like the fact that it fits you like you were wearing your older brother's Goth clubbing gear," she said, walking around him.

The other girl, dressed as a nurse, giggled. "Look at the size of that bust line! Some girls would kill for that, you know. Why are you hiding it?!" He crossed his arms stiffly over his chest, not liking the way they were walking around him like a pair of vultures. Time to make a break for it, he thought. He lunged forward, only to discover that since he'd become female… his center of balance had shifted. He fell forward, only to end up in the arms of the cop.

"What's your analysis, Anita?"

"I think you know my analysis, Tomoko," the nurse said back. "Off with her clothes!"

Their hands were all over him like tentacles, pulling. The safety pins holding his shirt popped with their effort. "Stop it!" he demanded, fighting against them, but again finding it as though he had strangely been drained of all his strength. "I need those."

"Not anymore, you won't," the one named Anita said, throwing the shirt aside.

"What if you do not have anything I like?" he asked as the one named Tomoko busied herself with trying to force his pants off.

"We'll find something you can wear; you just watch us!"

"What if I can not afford it," he asked, struggling against them as Anita started helping with the pants.

"Don't worry about it; you've got a credit card, don't you?" Anita laughed, waving his wallet. He lunged for it, but Tomoko had her arms around his chest and was pinning him in place.

"I can go to the cops about this. This is robbery," he protested, wishing his strength would hurry up and return if a girl in a cop uniform could keep him pinned in place. He wriggled, trying to free himself from her iron grip. That was it. He did not care if there were security cameras; he was going to take care of them. He ejected several scalpels from his hand… only for them to go clattering to the ground when he could not get a decent grip on them. He looked at his hands in shock. Shorter, thinner fingers… not the fingers his blades had been specifically designed for.

Anita picked up the scalpels. "Medical supplies, huh? I think we can do something for you after all," she purred. "Quick, Miki! Get those ugly clothes out of here!" she ordered. The guy standing outside snatched up the discarded clothing and ran with it.

"You had better give my things back…" Akabane threatened.

"Don't worry, you'll get them back. Although I don't know what you'd want them, after we finish dressing you up," she smirked.

"Look, the poor thing is even wearing men's underwear," Tomoko sighed. "We really need to give you the works, don't we?" she asked, removing the offending garments.

He crossed one arm over his feminine chest and stuck the other one between his legs. "Have you no respect for my decency?" he asked, his voice raised in anger.

The two looked at him and grinned. "Nope, none whatsoever!" they replied in unison.

He paused. "Are you two…Americans?"

"How did you guess?" Anita asked.

"I was raised there, but I moved back here to open this shop!" Tomoko smiled.

Akabane rolled his eyes. "How in the world did I ever guess?" he asked, shivering. Being completely naked in a public shop had not been on his list of things to do, and being the quiet and reserved type, he did not like showing himself to anyone even when in his male body. In this strange body, he especially did not like it.

"Look at those hips… that chest… that hair… the face… who does she remind you of?"

"A certain famous bondage model who happens to be dating a certain infamous rock star?" Tomoko asked, smiling. Akabane had no clue who they were talking about, and didn't care enough to ask.

"Let's try a corset then!"

"Would not it make sense to do underwear first?" Akabane asked, still covering himself… as he refused to think of himself as a herself no matter what… with his hands.

"A corset is underwear," Anita insisted, pushing strands of blue hair out of her eyes. "Move your arms!" she demanded, wrapping a sheet of vinyl around his… her?... middle and tightening it. "Tomoko, help me with this!"

The girls yanked on the vinyl and metal device, causing poor Akabane to let out a gasp. "How does it feel?"

"I can not breathe," he protested, tugging at the buckles on the front of what appeared to be a plastic torture device.

"You can still breathe enough to talk. Tighter!" Tomoko joked, binding the laces in their places.

"I do not like it," Akabane complained.

"You need it to support those knockers. Your back can't do it alone," Anita informed him, studying him.

"I do not like it, take it off," Akabane complained for a second time.

"Spoil sport," she said, undoing the laces and letting it fall off. Akabane took a gasp of air. He'd never appreciated being able to breath quite so much before. "Fine, if you want to go with a traditional bra and panties, I guess we don't mind if you're boring." She took out a measuring tape and wrapped it around his chest, causing him to jerk a bit. Her hands were cold, and he didn't like them on his body, let alone tender bodily parts. The girl whistled. "I'm going to need a 91 and a half, D," she called to Tomoko, who had disappeared out into the other room.

91 and a half? That wasn't right. He normally had a 102 centimeter chest, at the least, and his chest had gotten bigger since the incident. "I think you should measure that again," he informed her. "That can not possibly be the right size. My chest is much larger than that."

"I've been fitting bras for years; I know my stuff." She had her measuring tape around his hips. "I had a talent scout come in and tell me to call him if I ever ran into a girl with your measurements. I'll give you his phone number."

"No thank you," Akabane snapped, getting frustrated with the girls. If he weren't completely naked, he was certain he would have figured out how to hold his scalpels even if it wasn't the way he was used to.

"Here, put this on," she said, pushing something into his hands. He looked down at it.

"I can see right through it."

"So?"

"I prefer undergarments that are not transparent."

"At least try the fit on before you complain," Anita chastised, rolling her eyes. She watched him fumbling with it, and then let out another loud sigh, grabbing it away from him and putting it on him herself. "Where in the world do you come from, chests like those and not even knowing how to put a bra on? There, good fit, isn't it?"

"It does not hurt, if that is what you are asking," he answered, looking down. "I still would prefer less transparent under garments. What is the purpose of wearing them under anything if I can see right through them?"

"We'll get you something else in a minute, try these panties on first."

He held up the first pair. "I do not do thongs. Not in the past, not now, not ever," he informed the girls, throwing the first pair aside. "Something is wrong with this pair…"

"They're supposed to be crotch less," Anita said, rolling her eyes. He looked up at them, confused.

"Then… what is the purpose of wearing underwear if it's not covering anything?"

"What a boring girl you are," Anita yawned. "No wonder you were wearing ill fitting men's clothes."

Boring? If there was one thing Akabane hated being described as, it was boring. "I am not boring," he insisted. "I merely dislike everything you have shown me."

"If you dislike everything in our store, why did you come in here in the first place?"

"I liked the trench coat in the window."

Anita's eyes lit up. "Ah, now we're getting somewhere! I think we can work with this girl, after all." She put an arm around his shoulders. "Let's cut a deal, cuteness. You take the transparent bra and the panties that match it, and I'll get the coat and a nice white business shirt and tie to go with it for you without a fuss. I'll even give you a discount price."

He looked suspiciously at her. "What were you thinking I should wear for pants?"

"Pants? No, no. Look at those legs! How can you NOT wear a skirt?" Anita asked, flailing her arms in the general direction of his legs to emphasize her point.

"My _job_ is not conducive to wearing skirts," he informed her, eyes still narrowed in hostility.

Tomoko threw up her manicured hands. "Hey, the customer is always right. Even when she's wrong, that is. At least get some pants that flatter those pretty legs!"

When I find the person that did this to me, Akabane thought, the very first thing I am going to do is force them to come into this shop. Regardless of their gender. Then I will kill them.

Finally dressed, Akabane was more than ready to leave. "I will be paying and going now…" he informed them, edging towards the door. The pants were far too tight for his preference, but he didn't want to go through the trauma of finding a different pair. Especially after the two vicious girls had essentially clothes lined him to the floor, grabbed him by the ankles, and then took fifteen minutes to force the pair he was currently wearing onto his body. If that gave any indication of exactly how tight they were, that was. He was secretly thankful that they were not retrievers; if they had abilities beyond annoyingness and strong sales pitch they would be truly lethal enemies, but not the kind he enjoyed fighting.

"Where do you think you're going with only those ratty sandals?" the girls asked, continuing to pin him down by his arms. If had, had an ounce less self-control he might have broke into tears. The fact that he couldn't seem to break away from them was also doing nothing for his self-esteem at the moment.

"Oh, and don't button your shirt up all the way," the Anita one said, tearing open the top of the shirt all the way down to the bra line. "It's sexier this way."

He just hoped he would find these girls in a dark alley after he'd regained his masculine body. He would not just slice their backs with Js. That was much, much too good for these girls. He would rip out their intestines and make them into fashionable scarves, then dance in their disemboweled corpses until his shoes turned a sexy red with their blood. Perhaps he would even flay off their skin and use it to make himself another trench coat. He was willing to bet their tattoos would look lovely as coat details.

Those mental images, at least, made the fact that they forced fifty pairs of shoes that he couldn't even stand up in on him before finally letting him have a "boring" pair of flat heeled boots. Had it not been for the arrival of another customer to torment, thankfully, they had been full scale intent on forcing make-up and a haircut on him. The man, who seemed to be just a prop in the store, took his credit card while they essentially body checked the other pair of girls who had the unfortunate luck of wandering into the store, which Akabane only noticed as he was paying, as appropriately named the "The Venus Fly Trap."

As soon as he was out of the store, he immediately buttoned the shirt completely back up. He had a lot more things on his plate than worrying about being 'sexy'. He checked to make sure they'd put all his regular clothes back in his bag, even though he knew that he didn't have the strength left after that day to risk the mental trauma that would accompany going back into the store. Fortunately, it was all there, and he found himself walking so quickly away from the horrible place that he was giving himself blisters with his new shoes. A pity to have spent so much money on clothes he wouldn't be able to wear anymore as soon as he found the person responsible, but he considered it ransom money. He hadn't paid for the clothes; he'd paid for the privilege of escaping the grip of those two high-heeled demons.

Bedraggled and exhausted from the day, Akabane dragged himself to the bar. Essentially, he was taking things one stop at a time at that point. The girls, whose names would be forever etched into the depths of his mind, had taken more out of him than he'd imagined.

He managed to pull himself up to the bar and rather unceremoniously flop himself into his usual spot at the counter. The tender looked over at him, making an interested sound.

"Seeing you this uncomposed is unusual, Doctor Jackal," he commented. Akabane lifted his head, displeased expression written across his face. In the process, he lifted his body up enough so that the tender got an interesting view. "Oh! I'm sorry. You looked just like someone else I know…"

Akabane folded his arms uncomfortably over the bulk of his chest. "And who, pray tell, do I remind you of?"

The tender blinked, cocking his head in confusion. "Dr. Jackal? Is that _you_ under there?" At least, Akabane thought, his voice was close enough that it could be recognized. Other than the fact that his contacts still fit, it was the only thing about him that had apparently not changed too drastically. "Did you lose a bet or something?" the tender asked.

Akabane ignored the question. "The person who was sitting next to me last night, the one that I commented looked as though they were trying to be a Final Fantasy mage. Who was that?"

"I don't know; never seen 'em before. Are they the reason you've got water balloons down your shirt?"

"You could say that. I am going to ask around and see if anyone knows who that was." He held up the shopping bag containing his usual clothes. "Hold my bag for me."

As he started pushing away from the bar, the tender stopped him. "There's no time for that now. You have clients waiting," the tender said, gesturing to a back booth with a jerk of his head. "You'd better take those things off before you go to meet with them, though."

Akabane easily brushed the tender's hand from his shoulder. "I can handle this situation on my own." He walked over to the clients, head held high with as much of his old pride and posture as possible.

"Fortunately, they were not clients he had worked with before. He slid into the booth and pushed his business card at them. The two men looked down at the card, then disbelievingly up at him. "You're Doctor Jackal?" one asked, his voice incredulous.

"Do you have some reason to doubt?" he asked coldly, glaring at their sunglass-concealed eyes.

One of the men removed his glasses. "I do apologize, but we were under the impression that you were… a man," he said, glancing over at his partner.

"Does this change the offer you were going to make any?" he asked, replying with a question. He suspected that he was coming to understand the cryptic message he'd received on his phone. Only once he understood the difficulty of being a female transporter, he guessed, would he be given his male body back.

The two men glanced at one another again before looking back at Akabane. He distinctly noticed that their return glance was not on his face. "No… of course not… we've just never hired a woman transporter before."

"I assure you, it is no more painful than hiring a male."

"What we need you to do is a double transport. You will take a package to a location we will disclose to the driver we have hired There, you will exchange the package with another one and bring the second package back to me to get paid. The interceptors are interested in that second package.

"I take it the standard contract and wages will apply?" he asked.

"Of course."

"Then I will accept your offer."

They handed him a folded sheet of computer paper. "Meet at this address at the time specified tomorrow night. Your driver will be waiting for you." Akabane studied the paper after their departure. It was a boring job, not likely to bring him much enjoyment, but if he had to take it in order to get his male body back, he would do so.

There was one more stop he had yet to make that night, since he had accepted the job. He picked up his phone and dialed a number that even his female fingers knew all too well. "I'm closed now," a sleepy voice grunted when the other end picked up.

"Even to your favorite customer?" Akabane asked, voice smooth.

"Akabane-san! I hadn't expected you to call again so soon." He made a tsk sound over the line. "I told you, using your blades on bone too often will dull them faster."

"I need a full set of knives made before tomorrow night, but I need them in a different size than you usually provide me with. Before you complain, I will pay you twice your usual fee out of gratefulness.

The Artist sighed. "How quickly can you be here?"

"You know me. I will be behind you in a moment."

He walked over to the Artist's studio, noticing that the air was misty and threatened a storm, perhaps one with lightning and thunder. He smiled. If only the Thunder Emperor could see him now. He'd wet his little white briefs. Unfortunately, though, little Ginji-kun always traveled with the pugnacious Midou Ban. That man would never let him live the situation down, and he wasn't quite sure that the shocked look on Ginji-kun's face was worth the verbal abuse.

The Artist, a man who crafted weapons like an artist at a canvas, ran his hands over Akabane's new fingers. "Thinner, shorter, less veiny," he cooed. "Beautiful fingers. This will call for a more delicate blade, with a different optimal balance point." He started sketching. "Classic shape and ceramic again?"

"Of course," Akabane nodded. "I am a man of simple, classic tastes."

The Artist grinned. "I will have them in time for you to cut your dinner meat with them." He glanced over at Akabane's body, smiling. "If you decide to keep that body, I could use a model for my catalogue of new creations."

"As much as I appreciate your work and your vision, I am afraid I will have to decline your offer," Akabane answered, sliding his gloves back on. He'd seen what the models of the Artist's work were required to do, and he had no intent of making love to the barrel of a gun.

He began the trek home after leaving the Artist's place on higher alter than usual. Not due to fear that his female shape might invite violence, but because the scalpels that were currently too big for his hands lowered his attack accuracy. At least, after taking out his frustrations on a few of the Artist's testing mats, he'd managed to get the hang of holding onto them without dropping anything.

A man resting on a bench whistled, which Akabane ignored. He was still worn down from the day, and he hadn't had time to eat at the bar, resulting in his stomach rumbling. He yawned and stretched as he removed his keys from an inner pocket in the coat. He was thankful for the inner pockets. Even if the pants had, had pockets they were too tight to have possibly put anything in the pockets.

Of course, his first and foremost urgent need: the bathroom. He had been holding it since he'd left the store for fear that he wouldn't be able to get the pants back on. Now that he would home, he could finally go. It took a good ten minutes to get the pants off, after which he discovered that he'd gotten better of not making a mess all over the toilet seat or himself, as being female was less point and shoot than being male.

He curled up on his mat and rested, storing his energy for the next day.


	4. Hey Pretty

Note-y-note-y: Ban and Ginji are coming… in the next chapter! Like most things in life, Ginji's reaction is worth waiting for.

6-6

Akabane stayed in the next day, lying flat on his back until the Artist called him with the finished order. He had stayed in because his only pair of fitting pants remained the pants that required a good ten minutes of pulling, panting, and praying to actually get onto his body. Hopefully though, after her proved that he understood what taking a transporting job as a woman entailed, he would be granted his masculine body back, so he was in no hurry to rush out and buy any more women's clothing.

He stopped and studied himself in his bathroom mirror, once again cupping his breasts curiously in his hands as he stood half-naked before the bathroom mirror. Then, he spun around and looked at his butt. They were a rather nice little combo. He would have admired them on someone else. On himself, however, he could not wait to get rid of them.

He shook his head, wondering if perhaps he was going insane. He moved back into the main room of his apartment and put his shirt on, once again buttoning it all the way up to the very top button before putting his tie on. He felt no need to put himself on display, no matter what gender he was currently pretending to be.

At the very least the new clothes let him step out to the Artist's studio with more confidence than he'd had the previous day. It was hard to walk with both pride and one hand on your waist line to prevent your pants from slipping down around your knees.

The Artist had set out practice dummies for him, which Akabane happily tested his new blades out on. The size adjustment and new design had done wonders; the new scalpels cut with every bit as much accuracy and speed as his old ones. The Artist was delighted with Akabane's glee at the way the new blades danced, and willingly forgave Akabane for forcing him into such a rush order.

For once in his life, Akabane consciously decided not to be late for a job. He did not want to make a bad impression at his first job as a woman. Mainly, he did not want them to think his usual habit of being fashionably late had more to do with what was or wasn't hanging between his legs than his demeanor. His general attitude had always been that if you could financially afford the services of Dr. Jackal, you could afford the time investment to wait for him to show up when he wanted to.

As fate would have it, the clients weren't ready for him when he did arrive. They fumbled and explained that they'd heard rumors that Dr. Jackal was _always_ late, so they'd given him an earlier time than they actually wanted him there. Akabane rolled his eyes in frustration, which they did not see because he'd found a way to make his hat fit again. He should have known that the one time he actually showed up on time for a job would be the one time they would not be ready for him.

He sat around with the clients, his legs dangling off the end of the railing he was perched on top of. They clients tried to make polite conversation, but it was hard to consider any conversation polite when they talked at his chest instead of his face. Thus, he was grateful when by pure coincidence the drive also happened to show up earlier than expected.

He placed the suitcase containing the delivery at his feet, adjusting his seatbelt. After a bit of wrangling, he decided that straight down between the breasts was probably the best way to arrange the belt. The driver, a non-descript looking middle aged man in a business suit, glanced at him only once as they got under way. Akabane was grateful that the driver seemed to be a pro, able to pay attention to where he was going instead of what was in the seat beside him.

The two sat in silence. Akabane was not big on talking while on the job, and neither was the driver it seemed. A light rain had sprung up during the day, forcing them to use the windshield wipers. The wipers a "Thud-Swish-Thud-Swish" sound as they danced across the glass, filling the car the empty car with the sound of their motion. Akabane adjusted his legs, feeling his foot thud against the protective case.

"Do you mind if I turn on the radio?" the driver finally asked, breaking the silence.

"I do not mind," Akabane answered, looking out the window at the other cars passing in the rain. The clients had said they likely would not encounter interceptors until the return trip, if they did at all, but he found himself bored and wishing that something at least vaguely interesting would happen.

The driver spun through the stations, seemingly unable to settle on something he liked. Akabane found his indecisiveness annoying. He grabbed the control dial for himself, switching it over to a classical music station before resting back in the seat. He wondered if they were heated seats, as they did seem awfully warm considering that the rain had made the temperature outside plummet.

The first switch went off without a problem, as did the first half of the drive back. Akabane yawned. "It always seems longer on the way back, does it not?" he asked the driver, stretching his arms out.

"Yes… it does…" the driver said hesitantly, pulling onto an off-ramp.

Akabane sat fully up in his seat, body rigid. "You made a mistake. This is not the turn to get back to the client."

The driver raised a gun point-blank to Akabane's head, grinning. "No mistake here," he smiled. Akabane looked out the front windshield and saw two dark blue vehicles waiting for them in the emergency pull-off zone on the side of the little mountain road. He felt like an idiot for not realizing that the driver had actually been an interceptor. Then again, the client hadn't recognized him as one either, and they'd been the ones to hire him. They were far more at fault than he was.

The car pulled to a stop. The driver gestured to the door with his gun. "Get out of the car. Leave the delivery."

Willing to play along for the sake of having a less boring night, Akabane stepped calmly out of the car with his arms raised in the air. The driver joined him, still tightly holding the gun. "I never imagined the transporter would be a gorgeous babe," he smirked. He pressed the barrel of the gun into Akabane's back, between his shoulder blades. "Let's lose the coat, sweetness."

This was the part Akabane practically lived for. They'd search him for weapons, declare him completely helpless, and only then would he slaughter them. He relished the moment when their eyes switched from an expression of superiority to an expression of realizing they were hopelessly screwed in so many ways. Willingly, he slid the new coat off and let it drop to the ground.

The driver pushed the gun closer further into Akabane's back while one of the other interceptors ran and snatched up the coat, throwing it off to the side of the road. Akabane could practically see the dirty thoughts written on the man's face as he patted the female body down for weapons. "She's unarmed," he shouted.

This was the point where Akabane took his invitation to dazzle them. He zipped away from the muzzle of the gun, appearing behind the would-be searcher. The searcher let out a cry and dived into the dirt, barely saving himself from taking a hit in the back.

The driver attempted to shoot only to have the muzzle of his gun fall to the ground, neatly sliced right off the gun with a single clean cut. He let out a cry and dropped the gun, clawing at the car door in an attempt to get it open and drive away.

Two men tried to jump out of the cars to join their brothers, but Akabane caught the action with the corner of his eye and relieved them of their ability to breathe before they hit the ground. The searcher, lying on the ground, stopped trembling suddenly and cried out "I know where she's keeping the knives!"

He leapt up, catching Akabane by surprise as he was busy slicing the muzzle off the gun of a man who had come running from around the side of one of the cars. There was an awkward moment where the world seemed to go into slow-motion mode. Akabane saw the man flying at him. The man saw Akabane's blade coming down in his direction. The man's hands flew out, gripping their intended target, right as Akabane's blade met with his throat. He continued to fly forward, the world still seeming to behave at one tenth its normal speed. Well, his body continued to fly forward. His head, impacted by the sheer force of Akabane's slice, was flying off in another direction. The dead man's hands, however, had found their target and tightened around it, even in death. Needless to say, the force of an adult male, flying through the air, versus the ability of buttons on a cheaply made Gothic shirt, ended without a win for the buttons.

The front of the shirt, where he'd suspected Akabane had been hiding the scalpels under his chest, ended up flying open in a spray of buttons. Caught momentarily off-balance by the weight of the flying body, Akabane landed on his shapely ass while bullets flew over his head. He rolled beneath the car, bullets peppering the ground near him, using the car as cover to launch scalpels at the remaining interceptors. He continued rolling until he rolled out the other side, catching the driver by surprise. The driver barely had time for his face to twist into a contorted mask of surprise before Akabane introduced him to his signature J move, sending bits of the driver rolling into the grass.

Akabane stood up, victorious but disappointed. He'd hardly even worked up a sweat on that fight even though they'd been heavily armed with guns, and had confronted him with two car loads of people. He sighed to himself, kicking the bullet-deflated tires of the car. "They just do not make interceptors the way they used to," he commented dryly as he smashed in the passenger side window, reaching down to pick up the suitcase containing the delivery. If the car was shot to pieces, he would walk the delivery to the client. If rain, sleet, snow, and robots made out of washing machines couldn't stop him, neither could four flat tires.

Of course, Akabane's valiant sentiments about walking all the way back to the meeting place were ruined by the fact that in the silence, he realized the engine of one of the interceptor's cars was still purring. Embarrassedly pulling his hat over his face, he threw the suitcase into the passenger seat. Fortunately, it was an automatic. He hadn't driven a manual in years.

Despite the rain intensifying, the rest of the drive was as disappointingly uneventful as the first part had been. Akabane left the car a good two blocks from the drop point, less someone happen to remember seeing it there on the night its owner met a terrible fate. He adjusted his coat over his chest to hide the fact that his shirt was no longer in one intact piece before sliding out of the vehicle, landing in an ankle-deep puddle.

The rain was coming down in sheets by then, the wind whipping it sideways so that no inch of his body would be spared from dampness. Even holding the suitcase protectively over his head did nothing to keep him dry. By the time he made it from where he had abandoned the car to the client's address, the rain had penetrated even the twill fibers of the coat and soaked him thoroughly to the bone.

The servant who answered the door ordered Akabane to remain in the kitchen while he fetch the boss, lest Akabane drip on the expensive white-gray rugs. Akabane was unimpressed by the fact that the drop point was someone's house, as the gesture was rather unprofessional. Besides that, his clothes felt clammy from the rain, clinging to his body like a second skin.

The master of the house, whom recognized as one of his two nervous clients, and the servant appeared. Now that he could see the man in his lavish home and a rather ugly smoking jacket, Akabane could distinctly tell he was dealing with an underhanded CEO. Probably one who was new at being underhanded, for that matter. He'd narrowed it down to either that or a middle-rank yazuka trying to prove his worth by hiring an overpriced transporter for what the job would have actually required.

The servant handed Akabane a towel, which he put on his head. One meager little towel was not enough to fix how wet he was, but he did not wish to be rude by refusing the bit of offered hospitality. Even if his clients were not professionals, he was.

The client, meanwhile, was checking over the contents of the suitcase. "I'm glad the case was waterproof," he informed Akabane approvingly.

Akabane shrugged. "If you are pleased, then I will take my payment and quietly, quickly depart."

"You are soaked to the bone," the client said, his voice sounding as if he were only feigning concern. Akabane shifted uncomfortably when he noticed the client's eyes lingering hungrily on the drops of water running down his chest. "At least let me offer you hospitality and dry robes until this storm blows over."

"I am afraid it would be against my personal code of conduct to accept the hospitalities of a client." Definitely scum from the business world. The yazuka would have known better than to extend such a thing to someone like him.

"I absolutely insist! It's not safe for you to be driving out in that storm."

Akabane was unconvinced. "I have delivered through much worse than this." He'd never had a client so intent on letting death grace his doorstep before. He wondered if the female body should be blamed or if his client was just that inept.

"Come now, don't be so stubborn. If you refuse my hospitality I'll be terribly distressed, to the point where I might forget where I put the envelope with your pay in it."

Akabane's eyes narrowed into frighteningly little slits, his voice dropping into its most threatening tone. "I would recommend that you do not do that," he said, sliding a blade between his fingers and playing with it. "Should you wish for no one to get hurt."

The client finally backed down. "All right, I'll go get your payment," he whimpered, scampering off like a frightened child. Akabane wondered what all that had been about. He decided that he did not really care, when the client returned with the correct payment. He even got the half that was supposed to go to the driver, which reminded him…

"The driver was an interceptor. Why did you not notice that the man you hired to do the delivery was not the man who was in the car? Or were you foolish enough to have hired an interceptor in the first place?"

The client shuffled uncomfortably. "He looked the same with the glasses on," he muttered, sounding like he knew he was in trouble. The truth was, he'd been thinking about how lovely the transporter would look naked, rather than paying attention to the face of the man driving the car. "I'm a bit new at this hiring transporters thing."

"I could tell," Akabane replied, voice sounding icily sarcastic despite the fact that he wasn't trying to be so. "If that is all, I will see you next time you have a job for me." With that, he took his envelope and vanished back out into the storm.

He found himself almost wishing he had taken the offer, as traffic had crawled to a near standstill from the thunderstorm. He squinted, gripping the wheel tightly as the interceptor's car slid on a layer of water. The interceptors, it seemed, had worn their tires down to bare slicks. At least it seemed that way from the way the car was slipping about.

This was ridiculous. He couldn't drive in this! He decided to pull over and wait out the storm. He let the car hydroplane into the first open parking spot he found, accidentally hitting his head on the door when the wheels smacked into the curb. "Ouch," he muttered, rubbing his injured temple.

He happened to look up through the windshield, when he spotted something he had not expected to see. At first, he was shocked by the coincidence. Then, he smiled like the cat that had swallowed the canary. Finally, he just started laughing. "I do believe in karma, I do," he laughed. He'd been avoiding the Get Backers thus far, but it seemed fate wanted him to pay them a visit. For up ahead, glowing through the rain, he could see the fuzzy outline of the Honky Tonk's sidewalk sign.

---

At a distant location from Shinjuku, two women sat high in a tall, glass hotel complex. They had rented the highest floor with an opening. They enjoying the way the rain and lightning practically danced across the windows before their very eyes. Truly, it was best to be looking down upon the world.

Both women were tall, pale, and lean. Their features were so sharp and angular that it looked as though you might be able to cut glass with the edges of their bodies. It was obvious that both were older from the crow's feet and wrinkles decorating their faces, but they were well-preserved. That is to say, they looked as their useful selves had, but their youthful selves had been far less folded.

The green-haired, blue-eyed member of the pair tilted the wine in her glass. "So, tell me, what possessed you to use such a powerful spell on such an insignificant young man? I know it was not simple lesson teaching, as you have claimed," she said, smiling.

The red-haired, green-eyed member smiled and laughed, showing off the nearly fang-like teeth that she'd smiled with at the bar. "We came to Tokyo to look for someone with the proper blood to complete our spell, did we not?" she asked with a gentle laugh.

The green-haired one rose from her chair, eyes growing even harder as concern and anger traced her thin lips. "You found one?"

"Of course I did. When I smelled that man's blood at the bar, I knew I had found one. You could have seen me, sister. It took all my self-control not to leap up in joy."

The elder of the two sisters narrowed her eyes. "Have you forgotten, my little sister, that we need _menstrual_ blood for the spell to work? A man is of no use to us, even if he has the proper blood."

"Only one in a million have the right blood for our spell. The chances of finding another one, male or female, are highly against us. So I cast a spell upon our young hero to give him the body of a woman."

"It doesn't matter if you've given him the illusion of being female; if at heart he is truly male it still won't work."

"Sister, sister, you always were the type to say 'It won't work' before you've heard the whole story." She produced a small, heart-shaped vial filled with red liquid. "If he willingly drinks this, the change will become permanent, and…"

"We can use his blood for our spell." She paused. "But it for it to be a willing drink, he has to _want_ to remain female. How are we going to…?"

"Leave it to me, sister. Leave it to me," she smiled.

---

A/N: If you think I'm a pervert after reading this chapter, just read the Get Backers manga. You will discover that what I have written would fit perfectly into it. It seems to be a rule in the manga that any female fighter will lose no less than half her clothes in any one battle. Yeah, the guys have flying battle clothes syndrome too, but not quite as bad. And… well, just wait until you get to read _next_ chapter.


	5. Squeeze Play

Natsumi looked up in surprise when the little bell on the door tinkled. It wasn't that late, really, but there hadn't been a customer since the rain had started coming down. She herself was only there working on her homework because she was waiting for the Get Backers to return. Ban had promised to drive her home so that she would not have to brave the rain.

Whoever it was that Natsumi saw enter was holding a newspaper over her head and some bundled object tucked under her arm. Despite not being able to see the person's face, from the way they appeared she was certain she knew who it was.

"Ban-san and Ginji-san aren't going to be back until later, Hevn-san," Natsumi smiled. Akabane lifted the paper, enjoying the surprise on the girl's innocent young face. "Oh! I thought you were Hevn-san!"

"It is the chest, is it not?" he asked dryly, smiling at the girl. She looked as though she had no clue who he was, but he didn't blame her. They'd only met… what, two or three times? It wasn't as if they'd even really spoken before.

"You know Hevn-san? Are you a friend?"

"I am more of an associate." In a way, he was a client of hers, but that just didn't sound like the right word. He set his hat down on the table, laying it out so that it could dry flat without losing its shape. As he smoothed out the soggy brim, he sneezed. Then he sneezed again, and again, and again.

"You're soaked!" Natsumi cried, gentleness showing in her voice. Akabane rolled his eyes. Not again. Why did everyone seem so concerned with the status of his wetness?

The girl brought him towels from the back. He accepted her gesture, wiggling out of his trench coat and hanging it over a vent in hopes that the heat would at least reduce it from soaked to damp. He adjusted the remains of the white shirt so that it covered his chest as modestly as possible, considering that it was a wet white shirt and that the front buttons had been forcefully removed. He patted his face and neck dry with one of the towels.

There wasn't much he could do about his wet clothes except wait for them to dry out. It wasn't as if the Honky Tonk kept extra clothes about in case of emergencies. He wrapped his hair up in a towel to keep it from continuing to annoy him with cold drip-drip-drips down his back.

Natsumi turned around to make up the chai that he'd ordered. This was important to note because it meant that he didn't hear the doorbell ring over the sound of the milk frother. He also did not see the Get Backers enter, as he was busily watching Natsumi prepare his drink.

Ban grabbed Ginji and pulled his partner down behind a table, out of sight. "Watch me piss off Hevn," Ban whispered, eyes gleaming with mischief.

"I don't think you should, Ban-chan," Ginji chided in a whisper. Sometimes Ban's little jokes went too far. (1)

"You're a spoilsport. This will be fun," Ban insisted, sneaking around in a wide circle. It was really too bad that he wasn't paying closer attention to the girl at the counter; he might have noticed that bust size was where the similarities between the two ended. However, with his black hair tied up in a towel, Akabane did pose a slight passing semblance to her.

Ban crept very slowly up behind Akabane, hands twitching in a suggestive manner. Silently, without a word of warning, Ban sprang forward and wrapped his arms tightly around Akabane's chest, grabbing hold of the large breasts and squeezing hard. "You know better than to wear a white shirt in the rain!" he commented gleefully, expecting Hevn's usual backhand to his face to be the reaction. The backhand was well worth the price of the feel he got to cop, though.

Instead, Akabane reacted the way he usually did to being attacked from behind. Which is to say, he reacted much in the same way that a frightened porcupine would react. He swung his hand back, blades extended, until they struck the nearest fleshy object.

Now, take one moment to back way from this scene. Imagine Akabane sitting at a bar stool, his hands resting on the counter. Now imagine Ban creeping up behind him in such a way that he could grab an optimal hold on his chest. Then, imagine where Akabane's hand would land when it was whipped back off the counter and into his attacker's skin. Does not sound very pleasant, does it?

Ban let out a high-pitched sound, like a dog that had been kicked at the same time someone was letting all the air out of a bagpipe. Akabane, realizing the identity of his attacker, quickly withdrew his blades and jumped away from Ban in surprise. Ban, for his part, had doubled over in pain. His hands were clamped over the damage zone as he staggered backwards, whimpering. He finally landed on his side, giant tears forming in his big blue eyes.

"Ban-chan!" Ginji cried in alarm, running to assist his wounded partner. "What did you do to Ban-chan?" he shouted in anger, glaring up at Akabane. At that moment, however, Akabane's shirt was hanging completely open, and the bra was still as see-through as it had been on the day he'd bought it. Poor little Ginji's face turned as red as a tomato, a trickle of blood coming out of his nose. Realizing exactly why Ginji was suddenly bleeding, Akabane grabbed his shirt and pulled it back over his chest. Not that it helped, considering how as Ban had mentioned, it was a white shirt and it was completely soaked.

Ban reached up through his pain and grabbed Ginji by the ear. "I'm in pain!" he cried through his tears. "Don't look at her, get me some ice!"

Natsumi was already running with a bucket of ice. "I'm coming!" she cried. She wasn't paying attention, however, and slipped on the puddle of water that had dripped off of Akabane. She went down on her belly, the metal ice bucket flying up and into the air. Where it came down, well… it gave Akabane cause to repeat the mantra of 'I do believe in karma.'

By that time, the sounds coming out of Ban were no longer sounds anyone would associate with a human being. Ginji, frantic, pulled the heavy bucket off his partner and scooped the ice onto the wounded area. The outside of his pants had begun to turn red with blood.

"This isn't good," Ginji whimpered. "Ban-chan, you're bleeding… down there!"

"You think I don't know that?" Ban asked, voice twice as high pitched as usual.

By that point, Paul had heard the screaming and reappeared from the upstairs, where he'd been checking the power breakers for his computers. "What is going on down here?" he asked, voice thudding through the bar.

"She hurt Ban-chan!" Ginji cried, pointing an accusing finger at Akabane.

"It was his own fault," Akabane replied dully, causing Ginji to suddenly freeze in terror. That voice! He knew that voice! But that wasn't, that couldn't be, it shouldn't be, well it did kind of look vaguely like him… "He snuck up and grabbed my from behind. I was frightened and defended myself a little hastily."

Yes, that was definitely him. "Akabane-san?" Ginji squeaked in absolute terror, his voice rising up about as many octaves as Ban's.

Ban reached up and grabbed Ginji's ear. "Don't you dare turn tare yet," he sniffled. "I need a doctor!" He looked up at Akabane, who was still standing there with an overly smug smile on his face. "But NOT THAT ONE!" Ban declared angrily, pointing.

"Stop crying like a schoolboy and get over here," Paul demanded, grabbing Ban by the arm. Wounded, Ban cried out as he was forcibly dragged over and onto a table. It was the only booth in the bar with a privacy curtain, which Paul now took advantage of. It wasn't as if the booth offered any _real_ privacy, however, as they could see Ban's legs dangling out from under the sheet with his pants and underwear around his ankles.

"Consider yourself a very lucky man, Midou Ban," Paul said dryly as he applied a stinging antiseptic to the wounds and some temporary bandages.

"LUCKY?" Ban shrieked in anger.

"Yes. If you'd been standing about two more centimeters to the right, you could give up all hope of ever having children. At any rate, you need to get someone to stitch this up," Paul said, giving his impromptu analysis.

Meanwhile, out in the main area, Ginji was curled up in a corner, tare and face absolutely white. "Is… is that really you under there, Akabane-san?"

"You mean you did not recognize me right away? I am hurt, Ginji-kun. Genuinely hurt."

Ginji shuddered, holding a towel defensively. "I finally get to see girl boobies, and they are… they are Akabane boobies," he wept, feeling rather miserable.

Fortunately, Paul emerged before Ginji could continue with that train of thought. "You should take him to see the old man in Infinite Castle. He has to get those wounds stitched." He looked at Akabane, who was raising his hand in a gesture indicating that he was volunteering to do the job. "And I don't think he wants it done by you."

Akabane lowered his hand. "I try to be nice," he sighed, shaking his head.

Paul snorted. "Ginji, can you get him there?"

"I… I can't drive Ban-chan's car," Ginji muttered, still tare. He couldn't drive any car, frankly. It cost more money than he had ever possessed at any time in his life to go through driving school.

"I can't drive it," Paul retorted in irritation. "Someone has to take Natsumi home now that you can't, anyway."

Akabane raised his hand in a gesture of volunteering once again. "I am NOT letting Jackal drive my car!" Ban snarled from behind the curtain.

"It's either that or you let him stitch you up," Paul grunted, sounding as if he didn't care which Ban picked. He looked back over at Akabane. "Or would it be… let her stitch you up?"

Akabane shrugged, not indicating a preference either way.

Ban growled. "The answer is no to both!"

"Well, we could take my car," Akabane mused. "Except that it was not exactly my car, so I did not pay the meter, and I believe it has since been towed."

"The answer," Ban snapped, "is still no!"

"You can't leave those wounds without stitches. The minute you try to walk they'll tear open again, and I know you can't afford an ambulance."

"I will not give that man my car keys!"

"You mean the keys I took from your pocket?" Paul asked, waving the keys in a disgruntled fashion.

Ban checked his pocket. "Give those back!" he shouted, angrily waving his arms as he remained hidden behind the curtain.

"Don't thrash around like that, you'll open the wounds back up." Paul handed the keys over to Akabane. "Stop acting like a child and let him drive."

"Ginji, get my keys!" Ban shouted. "Quickly!"

Ginji leaped forward to obediently snatch the keys from Akabane's hands… only for Akabane to take the keys and shove them down into the bra. Ginji stopped in mid-leap, crashing to the ground. "Ban-chaaaan," Ginji whined, waving his tare arms. "He put them down his shirt!" He paused. "Or would that be, she put them down her shirt?"

"I certainly did, Ginji-kun" Akabane smiled, holding his arms out in a friendly gesture. "If you want them, all you have to do is reach in and get them."

Blood started seeping from Ginji's nose again as his face turned a brilliant red. "I… I… I can't do that!" he stammered, his voice a terrified squeak. Akabane was disappointed by the lack of shock that his sudden sex change was having on Ban and Ginji. Then again, due to the circumstances surrounding Ban's wound, maybe they just hadn't had time for it to sink in yet. Yes, he bet they would be really shocked when the adrenaline wore off…

"I will go start the engine," Akabane smiled, grabbing his hat and coat and vanishing out of the small bar even as Ban's shrieks of protest echoed in his ears. Ginji ended up carrying a bandaged Ban out to the car and laying him in the back seat, despite the fact that Ban continued to loudly protest about the idea of Akabane driving. "He is very lively for a tragically wounded man, is he not?" Akabane asked, adjusting the seatbelt.

Ginji shoved himself as close to the window as he could, which meant as far away from Akabane as he could possibly be. "Nothing keeps Ban-chan down, Akabane-san," he whimpered.

Unfortunately, Akabane demonstrated that his ability to drive a stick shift in blinding rain was not exactly the greatest still he had. It also didn't help that every time they ran over any bump in the road or any time the car skidded a bit on the water, Ban would start screaming about his precious car. He'd fume and kick and demand to know what had happened, and if they'd scratched it. All the while, the red stain continued to grow.

Also unfortunately, Ban did not pass out from the exertion before they arrived as close to their destination as they could via car. Thus, they had to figure out how to lift and carry him without touching his rather 'sensitive' wound. Akabane and Ginji eventually ended up making a sling out of the blankets from Ban's car.

They carried the protesting, whining, thrashing Ban into the tall black towers of Infinite Castle. A couple of people gave them odd or threatening looks as they passed. The wounded were prime targets for attack or robbery, after all. Akabane would return their looks with a smile, and every last potential enemy backed down when he did.

Gen was a bit surprised to see them. Upon being told the nature of Ban's wounds, he immediately carted Ban off to the back. "You'd better use anesthetic!" was the last thing Ban threatened before Gen shut the bedside curtain, closing the two of them off from Ginji and Akabane.

Tare-Ginji sat nervously beside Akabane, shaking in silence. Akabane swung his legs and whistled. He'd always been a bit of a fidgety. Especially when he wasn't exactly bored, but he also had nothing else to do.

Ren appeared with two blue robes in her hands. Akabane lifted one, and then placed a finger on Ginji's tare nose. "Gin-ji-kun?" he asked, mimicking the sweet tone one of his exs had used when trying to convince him to do things. He leaned further over, his coat gaping. "Can you do me a liiiiitle favor?"

Ginji swallowed, hard, his face turning redder. "Ye-yes, A-Akabane-san?"

"Don't peak," Akabane smirked, turning around and pulling an examination curtain shut just enough that it left the temptation to peak wide open. Once inside the curtain, Akabane let a wide grin grace his lips. Ginji-kun had looked ready to mess in his pants.

By the time Akabane managed to get out of the wet clothes and into the robe, all the while musing about how everyone had been trying to get him out of clothes all night, Ginji had changed. He'd also moved two seats down, Akabane dutifully noted. He returned gracefully to the chair he'd originally been sitting in, if only to further mystify Ginji.

After a long, awkward moment of silence, Ginji spoke up. "So… Akabane-san… did it hurt?" he asked, shaking a little in fear.

"Did what hurt, Ginji-kun?" Akabane asked, smiling.

"The… uh… snipping," Ginji asked, making a gesture with one stubby tare-arm in the direction of his own groin.

"You misunderstand, Ginji-kun. I didn't have a surgery. Someone seems to have cast a spell on me. I was minding my business at a bar, and when I woke up the next morning, there they were. Of course, when I find the person responsible, I will remove their reproductive organs as a gesture of my gratitude for this." He paused. "Since Ban-kun knows many witches, I thought he might know the identity of my assailant."

Ginji shook so hard his seat seemed to vibrate. "It's scary how you can say all that and keep smiling, Akabane-san…"

Akabane's smiled widened, his eyes closing into happy Vs. "You really think so, Ginji-kun?"

Before Ginji could answer, Gen and Ren reappeared from the back room. They were assisting a rather loopy Ban, propped up between the two of them. "Ooooh shay can you schee, by the jagaaaan's early light!" Ban sang, his voice slurred like a drunk. If it had not been for the other two, he would not have been able to stay upright.

"He'll be out of it for awhile from the anesthetic," Gen explained, sitting Ban down next to Ginji. "Make sure he doesn't re-aggravate those wounds until they heal. I'll give you some painkilling pills to take home once he's stable enough to leave."

Ban wrapped his arms around Ginji's neck, smiling crookedly. "I like you, Ginji…" he purred, voice slurred.

Akabane put a hand over his mouth so that he wouldn't laugh out loud, shoulders trembling a bit from the humor of the situation. Ginji, blushing, frowned over at Akabane. "It's not funny, Akabane-san!" Ginji protested.

Akabane was about to reply that it was, indeed, funny, when the old man looked down at him. "Your turn," he said simply. The grin melted right off Akabane's feminine face.

"What do you mean by that? My turn? I am not the injured one."

"I was listening to you talk. You said you just happened to wake up female. Forgive me if I'm just a confused old man, but that kind of thing was generally not considered normal back in my day." He gestured to his daughter. "Ren will assist you. Perhaps we can figure out what happened with an examination."

Akabane had a very bad feeling in his throat, similar to the one he had gotten right when the girls the Venus Fly Trap. However, he did agree that it was possible that an examination might reveal what had happened to bring about the transformation.

All the way across Tokyo, the actual cause of the transformation re-entered her hotel room, carrying a bundle of shopping bags. The red-haired sister turned around, looking condescendingly at her green-haired sister. "You look like you had a good time out shopping, while I was here making the preparations for the spell."

The green-haired sister smiled back. "I was out making preparations for the spell, as well," she said, setting out two bottles of black hair dye.

The red-haired sister narrowed her eyes and her lips, until it looked as though three frowns graced her face. "What do those have to do with the spell?"

The green-haired sister just smiled in response.

---

(1) Normally, I hate in-chapter author's notes, but I felt obligated to point out that in the manga, Ban does love giving Hevn a big squeeze. She usually backhands him pretty good for it, though.


	6. Trials by Fire

"Do you really think that a simple examination will reveal the cause of such a drastic transformation?" Akabane asked, unconvinced as the girl led him to a room in the far back and closed the door. "It seems to be a very complex issue."

"It's necessary. Don't you want to know if all the organs are there, or just some of them?" Ren asked, giving him a critical look over.

He hadn't thought of that. It was possible that he had only the external appearance of a woman and none of the internal parts. That was a question he figured he would like the answer to. Reluctantly and cautiously, he surrendered to her inquiry and sat down on the table present in the room.

"Don't sit down. You're not dressed properly for this," she grinned. He didn't like that grin. It reminded him of his own grin, and that was not a good sign. She gleefully held up what essentially amounted to a rectangular sheet of paper with shoulder straps on it.

"What is that?" Akabane asked, eyeing it suspiciously.

"Your examination robe," she said, her ear-to-ear grin conveying a taste of sadism.

"That can not possibly be the robe. That would not cover anything." He looked at her, noticing that she continued to grin victoriously. "You seem to be taking a lot of joy in inflicting this on a fellow female."

"I heard you talking, and I know that you're actually male under there. Now _you_ get to see what _we_ have to go through. After all, I keep hearing all my guy friends talking about how much worse they have it. I've always wanted to prove them wrong."

"You are quite the jaded little child," Akabane observed, very reluctantly turning his back to her and putting on the paper robe she'd offered.

"It comes with the territory," she answered. He figured that the territory she was referring to was the harsh reality of the Infinite Castle. Perhaps she was referring to the world of the Infinite Castle without the Thunder Emperor, he thought when she turned her back to him and he caught a glimpse of the logo on the back of her leather jacket.

"So… is your grandfather going to be doing this examination?" he asked, sitting on the table and uncomfortably trying to keep the robe closed.

"Nope!" she answered brightly. "I am!" She took off her jacket and started putting on a lab coat.

Akabane blinked. "You're just a girl…"

"My grandfather trained me to handle these things. It's an easy enough exam, and the female patients usually feel more at ease when a girl does it." She snapped her gloves. "Those that are not actually men, that is."

Akabane suddenly felt very, very nervous. The examination progressed with a bit of pain, Akabane attempting to act as though he were not feeling the pain, and Ren smirking at the fact that he was pretending not to feel the pain. It was also… well, to put it bluntly, it was rather embarrassing. Humiliating was perhaps even a better word for it.

"Yep, it's all there. Congratulations, you seem to be fully female," Ren informed him, looking up from between his slightly damaged vital organs. Truth be told, it hurt physically, but he was certain that his pride had taken most of the blow.

"I could have told you that," he answered, trying not to reveal any pain or weakness as he sat up. "So far, nothing but bad things have happened to me since I turned female. Are there not _any_ benefits to being a woman?" he asked.

She handed the robe back. "Of course there are," she answered, turning her eyes away. He didn't see much of a purpose in her giving him modesty while he changed, considering as how she'd essentially seen all of his nude body by that point. He adjusted the robe over his chest, wincing. The pain would go away soon enough, as he was an amazingly fast healer, but that didn't help things at the moment.

She turned back, studying him a moment before giving her answer. "Higher pain tolerance," she answered, voice completely deadpan.

"That is not a very convincing argument," he responded, leaving the room.

Ban and Ginji were still in the other room, as Ban was only beginning to become conscious enough to talk again. He glared up when Akabane re-entered the room. "Where are my car keys?" he asked, but since he was still half-drugged, it came out as "Wha at mah cah kays?"

"They were with my clothes, which the girl took."

"They're here in the desk," Ren answered. "We emptied the pockets and sent all your clothes down to be dried. They should be back all nice and warm in a few minutes." She looked at her grandfather. "I didn't find anything. He's a perfectly normal, healthy young woman," she said, casting him a bit of a sideways smirk.

Akabane looked over at the girl and her grandfather. "After all that, you came up with absolutely nothing that will help me get my male body back?" he asked, his voice distinctly unhappy.

Ren shrugged. The drugged Ban, however, launched instinctively into his sales pitch. "Weda Get Backers. Get anything back. Nearly hundrah perchant success rate!" he said, words still slurred.

Ginji hated the way Akabane's head turned to face them slowly, like a creature out of the Exorcist. A grin graced his face, and his eyes were dark. "Well then, perhaps I can offer you a job." He ran one hand across his chest in a way that was intended to tantalize poor Ginji. "Get back my real gender."

"Wesh can do aaaaaaaany job!" the anesthetic-high Ban answered.

"Ban-chan… I don't think you should…" Ginji began to whimper. He had intended to finish his sentence with 'take a job from Akabane,' but Akabane was faster than he was, and had wrapped his arms around Ginji's head and shoved Ginji's head into his female chest. "Will you not accept my job?" he asked, playing with a strand of hair on top of Ginji's very red face.

Ginji, from his vantage point, could see inside Akabane's robe. Somewhere, in his conscious mind, he knew who that nipple was attached to. He knew he should be horrified rather than delighted and blushing. He knew he should be screaming and running away rather staring. However, he knew all these things in his brain, and the moment, Ginji distinctly was NOT thinking with the head attached to his shoulders.

"Wed take any job!" Ban cried again, waving his arms.

"If you disagree, Ginji-kun, you should say something," he purred, pulling Ginji in tighter. Ginji made a few little burble noises, trying to summon up the word no, but it just wouldn't come out.

"I think he accepts," Akabane smiled, grabbing Ban's hand and shaking it. "We have a deal now. I would hate to see what would happen to someone who goes back on a contract signed with me," Akabane smiled, letting Ginji go. Ginji fell over in the chair, deflated like a beach ball that had just rolled across a lawn of tacks. Somewhere, deep inside the part of Ginji that was still thinking, he realized he was now in _big_ trouble. Akabane, however, just grinned over at Ren. "I believe I have found an advantage to being female," he smiled.

Ren scoffed. "You're surprisingly good at that for someone who supposedly only grew those boobs a few nights ago. Are you sure you haven't done this before?

"What can I say? I have had very manipulative cohorts in my time," he shrugged. Right then, their dry clothes arrived back. Akabane excused himself to the back of the room to change, while Ginji and Gen set to assisting the still loopy Ban in getting dressed.

In back, Akabane discovered a terrible problem. His pants, it seemed, shrunk in the wash. They hadn't shrunk much, maybe three centimeters at the most, but since the pants had barely fit him in the first place… he couldn't get them back on, no matter how hard he yanked and pulled.

This was bad. It wasn't as if his underwear offered any sort of actual coverage on top of the pants not fitting. He could get them on everywhere except the hips, where the buttons just absolutely refused to go back together. He had to do something, though. He couldn't just walk around with his pants hanging open…

He peered out from behind the curtain. "Ren, was it? Do you happen to have safety pins I could borrow? Large ones?"

Ren gave him an odd look. "I do," she said, offering them over. "Why do you need them?"

"Costume malfunction," he answered, disappearing back behind the curtain.

"Costume… malfunction?" she asked, confusion written on her face.

Akabane tried pinning up the front of his pants, but the pins gapped open and showed more than he cared to expose to the world. What to do now? There had to be something…

He looked down at his pants once more, then sighed and slit open the side of each leg at the hip, pulling them up and then safety-pinning them up the sides. It was less obvious if the sides of his pants were open than the front, after all. No one could see the sides anyway because of the way his coat hung.

By the time he emerged, Ginji was fully dressed. The woozy Ban was slung over his shoulders. Gen was giving him a talk about what Ban should and shouldn't do on his medications. When Gen was done, Akabane smiled at Ginji. "Do not forget our agreement, Ginji-kun. I would, as I said, hate to see what would happen to someone who broke a contract with me. When Ban-chan is ready, I will be waiting for you in the hallway. After all, he is still in no shape to drive."

Ginji trembled, trying his hardest not to turn tare and drop Ban in the floor in the process. "Scary," he muttered as Akabane pushed past him, sashaying out into the hallway. "Are you sure you didn't see anything that would help us figure out what happened, Ren-chan? Anything? He's too scary to disappoint…"

"I didn't notice anything right away, but if I think of something, I'll let you know right away," she answered earnestly.

Akabane leaned against a wall and attempted to light a cigarette. After that mess, he really needed one, although he generally disliked smoking in public. He considered it unbecoming of the image he liked to keep up, although at the moment the very way he already looked ruined his image.

Damn it, what was wrong with his lighter? It just wouldn't spark. It seemed to have gotten too wet in the storm to be useable, which frustrated Akabane. At this point, he really needed that cigarette.

A small something glinted in front of his face, causing the end of his cigarette to light. Akabane jumped, dodging the attack that immediately followed. He followed up his dodge with a scalpel counter attack, piercing through an array of small mirrors. "Kagami Kyoji-kun," Akabane smiled. "To what do I owe the pleasure of fighting you today?"

"I came down here because I had to test you. I was afraid that you might have gotten soft, what with the sex change and all," Kagami answered, pulling a scalpel out of the mirror piece right next to his head.

Kagami seemed relatively casual about seeing his enemy switch genders for no apparent reason. Akabane didn't know if he should ponder that, or if it was just part of the way Kagami was. "Tsk. If Lady Poison could hear you now, she would damage some of your internal organs swiftly."

"She would, wouldn't she?" Kagami sighed romantically. Then, returning back to his normal expressionless face, he turned his attentions back to Akabane. "I'm glad to say you're just as fast and lethal as you ever were, perhaps even slightly faster. The smaller body frame is probably responsible for that," he smirked. "You've adjusted very quickly to that female body, faster than I would have expected. Then again, you are the infamous Doctor Jackal…"

Akabane returned Kagami's smirk. "Such glowing praise, Kyoji-kun. I will treasure them long after you are gone." With those words he ejected scalpels out of both hands, lunging forward at Kagami.

Before he could take more than a single step, however, Ginji swung the pharmacy door open directly in his path, blocking Akabane's view of Kagami. "Ano… Akabane-san, can I bother you to- gerk!" he cried as Akabane pushed him out of the way, leaping around the side of the door. By the time he got there, however, Kagami was long gone. He made a disgruntled noise deep in his throat. "I would like to fight him just once without him running away."

"Huh?" the injured Ginji asked, looking all around.

"Never mind," Akabane shrugged. "You were going to ask me something?"

"Yes!" Ginji said, snapping to attention. "Would you drive us home?"

Akabane looked at the singing Ban, still draped over Ginji's shoulders. "He's still out of it?" Akabane asked.

"Still out of it," Ginji replied, a sweat drop gracing his head.

"But still conscious enough to want to know who has his car keys," Akabane noted, referencing the fact that the song Ban had just made up seemed to focus on singing about said car keys.

The rain had thankfully reduced itself to a drizzle by the time they departed, Akabane walking slightly ahead of Ginji. It was not his usual habit, but he was enjoying glancing over his shoulder to see Ginji trying not to look at his butt or swaying hips.

They settled Ban into the back seat, where Ban finally gave up and collapsed into a deep sleep. It was too bad really. Without the sound of the rain or Ban's drug-induced songs the car was as quiet as a coffin. Although, Ginji would have considered that a very bad analogy.

It was too quiet for Ginji. He had been uncomfortable being alone with Akabane in the space of a hallway, or the width of a boat. To be practically alone with him in the confines of Ban's little car was far worse. Ginji could only pray that Akabane hadn't noticed his cold sweat yet. "Park here, Akabane-san," Ginji said finally, breaking the silence.

"Here?" Akabane asked, disbelieving. It seemed to be a grocery store parking lot.

"This store doesn't mind if we park the car here for a long time," Ginji explained nervously.

Akabane did as instructed. He turned off the engine and tossed Ginji the keys, stepping lightly out of the vehicle. "I suppose I will see you next for an update on my retrieval project, then?" he asked.

"You're going to walk home, Akabane-san? But it's dark and late and-"

"You were never concerned with my safety before."

"Well, it's just that…" Ginji let his voice trail off, nervously rubbing his spiked blonde hair.

"I am a girl?" Akabane asked, raising an eyebrow. "How quaintly chauvinistic of you, Ginji-kun. Are you volunteering to see my safely on my way?"

That wasn't what Ginji had meant to imply. "I just meant that it might be safer to take a taxi!" Ginji stammered, throwing up his arms.

"It is not far, and I prefer the exercise. Goodnight, Ginji-kun."

Ginji paused. Even if it _was_ Akabane, his sense of chivalry wouldn't let him let a woman walk alone through Shinjuku at that time of night-becoming-morning. He took a deep breath. This is what it means to be a self-sacrificing hero, he guessed. "Wait, Akabane-san! I can walk home with you!"

Akabane shrugged. "Do as you will."

Ginji took a deep breath, swallowed his fear, and fell into step behind Akabane.

6-6

The last thing you wanted to see here is a to be continued. Admit it!

As a second note, this is the "PG-13" edit of this chapter. A more graphic version (read: higher rating) of this chapter and some of the later chapters does exist, but I have not posted it anywhere yet. I intend to put it up somewhere… eventually.

Any chapter which has an alternate version will contain a note at the end marking it as the PG-13 edit.

Oh, and the robe is a joke on the ending of the Resident Evil movie. We all looked at it and went "What hospital uses THAT gown?"


	7. A Cold Shower for Ginji

Ginji had to scamper to keep up with Akabane at first, but once he'd managed to match his pace with Akabane's, he looked down at his shoes. "Ano… Akabane-san?"

"Yes, Ginji-kun?"

"Maybe you shouldn't get your man's body back. I mean, this could be like a whole new start for you! You could get a new job, where you wouldn't have to kill anymore!"

Akabane wished he had this conversation on tape. He'd make Himiko pay up. "A job based on my body, like stripping or modeling? No. I do not think so."

"You could-" Ginji hesitated. Somehow, most of the jobs Ginji associated with traditional femininity really didn't seem to fit Akabane. He especially did not want to think of the possibility of there one day being many tiny Akabane's in the world. The mental image of him tied to a chair while several scalpel-wielding black haired toddlers ran in circles around him was not appealing. "Start a restaurant!"

Akabane stopped, wondering how Ginji had come up with that career option. "A restaurant?"

"Mmm, mmm!" Ginji nodded. "You could be a super-fast sushi chef, like those guys on TV. Chop-chop-chop-chop!" Ginji exaggerated, waving his arms up and down in the air like a toy robot for emphasis.

"I am lucky I can operate a microwave without starting myself on fire," Akabane replied with a shrug. This was why he adored Ginji-kun. He was not on a job, and yet, somehow he was not bored.

Ginji thought for another moment. "Then- how about working in the circus! You could… do fancy knife-throwing tricks! Can you juggle?"

"I am afraid with a body like this, I would be expected to be my own scantily-clad assistant, and I do not know how that would possibly work out. I do not like being publicly exposed."

"Mmm… geeze, Akabane-san, it's not like you have a bad body at a- ERK!" Ginji cried, slapping his hands over his mouth. He couldn't believe he'd just said that. He could not believe he had just said that to Akabane. What was wrong with his head?

Akabane just snickered softly. "Are you feeling all right, Ginji-kun? You seem to be a little green around the girls… oh, I am sorry. I meant to say gills."

"Stop teasing me, Akabane-san. It's not funny," Ginji pouted. He wished Ban were there. Ban would protect him from the scary Akabane.

"I will stop teasing you, for we are at my apartment. Goodnight, Ginji-kun. I appreciate the accompaniment."

"Goodnight, Akabane-san," Ginji sighed, letting out the breath he'd been holding through the entire trip. He couldn't believe it. He'd gotten Akabane home completely without incident or scalpel-blades.

As Ginji started to leave, Akabane began walking up the stairs. He was so busy thinking about how his luck seemed to be improving that he didn't see the wet, slippery patch on the middle stair. He only felt it as he slipped, falling backwards as his arms reached out desperately to try to stop his fall. His legs went up, over his head, and he knew that the impact he was going to receive upon landing would not be pleasant…

But there was no impact. At least, not on his head. There was a "floof" sound, and he found himself cradled in Ginji's arms. They both regarded one another for a good, solid minute before Ginji turned absolutely red in the face and pushed Akabane upright. "Sorry, so sorry Akabane-san, but I saw you falling and I…"

"No need to apologize," Akabane answered, brushing off a sleeve in an attempt to cover up the dignity he'd lost by doing something as stupid as falling down his stairs. "I am not completely used to the lower center of gravity of this body yet."

"Are you okay, Akabane-san?" Ginji asked.

"I am fine. I think I may have struck my twisted my ankle in the fall, but I will put some ice on it and it will be fine." He attempted to put weight down on that ankle, noticing that it seemed mostly fine if a bit swollen.

"Let me help you, Akabane-san!" Ginji exclaimed, offering a friendly arm.

"You really are amazing, Ginji-kun," he asked, just staring at the arm without accepting or declining it.

"Huh? What do you mean, Akabane-san?"

"You are obviously terrified of me, and consider me one of the vilest villains to crawl the underbelly of the world. We have tried to kill one another. Yet you are here, ready to give me a hand if I should happen to sprain my ankle."

Ginji tried to think of an explanation, then just shrugged and said, "I try to do to other people what I would want them to do to me, Akabane-san. Even if they don't live by the same philosophy."

"Do to others what you would want them to do to you?" Akabane asked. He knew he was taking that phrase in the wrong way, but he didn't want to take it right. It was far more amusing to twist into something dirty. He put his foot down, and then dramatically made a face to make it look like it hurt more than it really did. "I do not think I can put any weight on it."

Ginji looked back and forth as though another option might appear to him, and then sighed. "I'll carry you up the stairs, Akabane-san."

He was startled by how little the other man seemed to weigh. It had to be the female body, as he'd accidentally had Akabane sit on him in one of their other missions, and he remembered Akabane as being rather heavy at that time. When they reached the top of the stairs, Ginji tripped on something and nearly dropped Akabane.

"What was that?" he asked, setting Akabane down next to his door. He picked up the box. "It's for you, Akabane-san!" Ginji said brightly.

"For me? That is odd… it must have gotten blown off my doorstep in the storm," he commented. Ginji handed it over as Akabane stood on one foot, fumbling with the door locks.

"Well, if you're home, then I really should get back… Ban-chan will be wondering where I went…" Ginji whimpered, backing away from Akabane.

"Will you not let me repay your kindness with food?" Akabane asked, gesturing to his kitchen. Ginji's stomach let out a very loud growl. He'd used the last of his and Ban's food money to buy Ban's pain medications, after all, so Akabane had said just the right word. That left Ginji trapped between a rock and a hard place. He could go hungry, or he could enter the Jackal's den. Starve to death, or be eaten… which was the less painful choice?

"I… I suppose it would be okay for me to have just a _little_ something, Akabane-san…" Yes, he'd grab something and make his exit as fast as possible.

"Take your time, I owe you a debt of gratitude," Akabane smiled, limping over to his table with the box. "Just bring me some ice, please."

Ginji nervously brought Akabane a bag filled with ice cubes from the freezer, trying to keep as much distance between himself and the killer as possible. Akabane smiled. "I am very grateful," he grinned, removing his sock and shoe to place the ice on one delicate, slender ankle. Even his feet looked prettier in a woman's body, he thought to himself. Then, he asked himself where that thought had come from. He did not like his female body, nor did he think it was pretty… did he?

"Ginji-kun, do you think this body is pretty?" he asked.

Ginji, rooting through the fridge in hopes of finding snacks, froze up. There was absolutely no way to answer that question. If he said no, he would make Akabane mad. If he said yes, he might encourage Akabane to do very frightening things. "I… I… I think the body doesn't matter if the mind is pretty!" he said brightly, proud of himself. That was the kind of thing girls loved to hear, or so he'd been told.

"Mmm… I suppose there is no hope for me then, even with this body." If Ginji was going to spout stereotypical self-esteem drivel, then he was going to reply in kind with stereotypical angst.  
"Don't say that, Akabane-san!" Ginji cried. In one hand, he had an apple. In the other hand, he had a handful of rice. Pieces of rice were dripping all the way down his shirt, as he'd been trying to shove both in his mouth at once.

"Are you suggesting that I do not have an ugly mind?" he asked, intentionally manipulating Ginji into giving him a compliment. Ginji made a flat face that indicated he knew Akabane was just fishing for praise by that time.

"Do I have to answer that, Akabane-san?" he asked dully. By that time, his pockets were bulging with food items he had 'covertly' snuck from Akabane's fridge. "I really do have to be getting back now, Ban-chan will wake up and he'll wonder where I am…" He stopped in mid-sentence, as Akabane's arms were now wrapped around his chest, his breasts pushed straight into Ginji's back. Ginji turned red in the face and trembled.

"Why do you not have a girlfriend, Ginji-kun? You seem like the kind of sweet dope girls want." Ginji made a face, not knowing if that was a compliment or not.

"I have-haven't found the right girl," he stammered, absolutely frozen or not. Akabane was running one female finger over his lips, causing him to shake further. He wanted to run, but his legs refused to move.

"Or… could it be that the emotional scars of the Thunder Emperor keep you from getting close to anyone, in case they might hurt you?" Akabane laughed as Ginji trembled. "No, that is not it… after all; you do seem to _love_ your Ban-chan. I envy you. It is not a feeling that I believe I will ever experience."

Ginji tore himself out of Akabane's grip. His heart was racing, but… but… it didn't feel like it was racing in the same way it usually was when he was so close to Akabane. He swallowed hard, his legs feeling like jelly. What the heck was wrong with him? "You're wrong, Akabane-san! Everyone is capable of finding someone they love." He looked down at his shoes. "At least, that's what I want to believe…"

Then, Akabane did the very last thing anyone would have ever expected him to do. It was even the last thing he had expected himself to do. He walked right up and Ginji and gave him a full kiss. To his absolute horror and shock, Ginji found that he couldn't tear himself away from Akabane. 'No, no, no, this is AKABANE-SAN! You know? DOCTOR JACKAL?' his mind was screaming. His body, however, was screaming 'Warm female flesh! Warm female flesh! I am gonna get some!" To his mind's absolute horror, it seemed that his body was fully in control. It was like he couldn't stop. Like… like he was also under a spell. Like just being near Akabane put some kind of spell on him that made him lose control of his own body.

It was a cliché, he knew, but somehow Ginji found Akabane wedged between himself and a wall. Akabane's hands were roaming into regions he had never had female hands before explore, touching whatever they found. Ginji wasn't quite sure where his vest had gone by that point, but he found himself surprisingly not caring. Akabane was so warm, so soft, so…

Then, Akabane's cell phone rang. It rang, and it rang, and it rang loudly. Akabane looked away from Ginji, trance-like state suddenly broken. "Stupid phone," he muttered. When he turned back around, the front door of his apartment was wide open, and Ginji and Ginji's vest were long gone as well. "Stupid, stupid phone!" he fumed, kicking his hallway table over as he stomped over and slammed his door shut.

Outside, a good two blocks away, Ginji sat fully clothed in a public fountain. It wasn't _exactly_ a cold shower, but the water _was_ freezing. He had made fun of Ban for showering in fountains before, but he needed it, and any port in a storm…

Back at his apartment, Akabane angrily yanked his shirt back into place. He stormed over and grabbing the phone. "This had better be a call about a very, _very_ interesting job," he hissed into the line. After all, he had just lost his chance to get to test out the Thunder Emperor's powers in a way he'd never gotten to explore before.

"Jackal?" the voice on the line asked, sounding urgent. It was the tender at the transporters bar. This was odd. It was very early in the morning, and even transporters had their hours of operation. The tender knew this. It had to be something very important for someone as seasoned as the tender to be calling him at that time. "I am so glad you finally picked up! I have been trying to call you all night!"

"I had my phone on silent," Akabane sighed, wondering why he'd turned the sound back on as he waited for Ginji to bring ice. Well, he knew the reason. In case he got a call, because he hadn't known what as going to develop. If he hadn't, he would probably be doing something far more fun than talking to the tender on the phone at that moment.

"You've… got a problem. That client who hired you yesterday? Well, maybe two days ago now, but…"

"It does not matter," Akabane cut the tender's ramblings off, getting himself a juice out of the fridge. He felt as though he needed something harder, but it wasn't his nature to keep alcohol around. "What is the problem?"

"He came in looking for you again today. I tried to explain to him that you do not come in every day, but he said he couldn't reach you on your phone and demanded to see you. I said that you might be out on another job and… well…"

"And yes?" Akabane asked.

"He kind of lost it."

Akabane set his juice down, holding the phone between his shoulder and his ear while he worked on unclasping the safety pins on his shirt. "What do you mean by lost it?" Akabane asked, sounding unpleased.

"He climbed up on a table, shouted until everyone in the bar was staring at him… and then announced that you were now his _private_, _personal_ transporter, and that anyone who attempted to hire you away from him would meet with a short and cruel fate."

Akabane put a hand on his face, rubbing his eyes. "I am not in the mood to deal with this right now," Akabane groaned. "I will call the client tomorrow and inform him that if he wishes to attempt to possess me, he might find himself meeting a short and cruel fate." This was the most ridiculous thing Akabane had heard of in a long time. He'd had his fair share of jealous significant others in his life, but this was the first time he'd ever had to deal with a jealous client.

"Before you go, did you find the package I left for you?"

"You left that?" Akabane asked, glancing over at it.

"It's from your client. I swore in blood that I'd take it to your place, since I refused to give them your address."

"I thank you for that. I generally do not approve of psychotics other than myself knowing where I live. What is in it?"

"I don't know. Be careful when you open it though; that guy was nuts."

"I understand. I will deal with him myself tomorrow," Akabane answered, hanging up the phone. So that really hadn't been worth losing a chance to permanently mentally traumatize Ginji, but he guessed it was kind of important. It was something he should deal with sooner rather than later, at the least.

Akabane walked over to the package, frowning at it. He cautiously undid the string typing it shut with one scalpel, then jumped back. When he didn't smell explosives, gunpowder, or anything else dangerous, he moved closer again and carefully flipped the lid off the box with one scalpel.

Cautiously, he leaned over and peered inside. Lying in the box was a bundle of fabric, as well as a note. Akabane frowned and picked the note up gently between two fingers. When he was convinced it was only an ordinary piece of paper, he unfolded it.

"My dear Doctor Jackal," the note began. Akabane rolled his eyes and stuck out his tongue. The client was addressing him that casually, and yet addressing him by his code name? "I was very pleased with the job you did for me last, but sad that you could not stay to spend the night. I believe we would have had delightful conversations. Perhaps we can meet again? I have many, many more transport jobs for you. They are good jobs. You will like them."

"Do not try to tell me what kind of jobs I will like," Akabane snapped at the letter, one hand holding it while the other hand fumbled with the bra clasp. "I hate that."

"The bar that you transporters frequent… it is a bit rough, is it not?" Akabane read out loud from the letter as he slid the bra up and over his head, dropping it on the ground. "Well, we are transporters," he commented to himself as he started working on getting the pants off.

"I would like to meet you at a classier establishment to discuss my next job for you. I would like you to meet me Friday evening." Akabane paused. "That is tonight, isn't it?" he muttered as he kicked the pants off and across the floor. He really needed to go shopping. He was getting sick of having to squirm around for ten minutes at a time to get his pants on. "No, I would not only like it, I would cordially request it. I would like, however, for you to wear this when you come to meet me."

Akabane put down the letter and lifted up the bundle of fabric. He frowned. "He sent me a top, but where are the pants?" He asked, continuing to riffle through the packaging. He turned back to the letter. "Perhaps it will tell me…"

"I tracked down where your coat came from. The girls at the store were delighted to help me… pick out… clothing in your size." Okay, that was it. He'd talked to _those girls._ Client or not, Akabane imagined a painful future for him. Still, where was the rest of the outfit? He found the top, and the underwear, but… no pants?

Akabane held up the rather small piece of fabric, squinting at it. It was not supposed to be a dress, was it? Well, he would figure it out later, he thought as he threw it to the side. At the moment, he just wanted a shower and bedtime.

He yawned widely, wrapping a towel around his body and stepping into his bathroom. What a week this had been! At least, he had gotten _more_ than a full taste of what trials a female transporter had to face. He should be getting his male body back any minute now… yes, he bet that when he woke up, he would be a man again, and the whole issue with the client would be moot. He stepped into the bathroom and hung up his towel. At least he could still enjoy the pleasures of a warm, relaxing shower without being disturbed.

Had he looked straight up, he might have noticed something. Over the shower hung a small fan vent, intended to carry the shower steam outside rather than letting it linger in the apartment to encourage mold and mildew. That vent, prior to that day, had been perfectly flush with the ceiling. Today, it gaped slightly. Just a little, really only enough that you would notice if you were concentrating on it, which Akabane was not.

The tender had not noticed someone following him to Akabane's apartment. The tender had not noticed a man waiting in the shadows as he left the package for Akabane and scurried off. No one had been around to see the man creep up to Akabane's door, slink against it, and then put the time and dedication into opening all four locks.

Once inside, no one had also seen him creep into the bathroom, remove the grate over the ceiling fan, and install a small web-camera just above the fan blades. Of course, if the blades were stopped at a particular angle, or were on during the shower, the camera would have been of no use. Unfortunately for Akabane, he usually did not turn the fan on until after his shower.

The "client," one Fujimoto Yukio, leaned back in his apartment, enjoying the feed the little camera was putting out. He leaned back in his chair, a little bit of drool puddling in the corners of his mouth. "She looks just like… _her_," he sighed, looking around his room. The walls in his computer room were covered… no, not covered, papered… in posters of the fetish model the girls at the Venus Fly Trap had mentioned to Akabane. Any space not adorned by a piece of memorabilia was taken up by a preserved butterfly corpse. "And she acts like her, too! So aloof and cold, a true creature of darkness" he said, hands over his fluttering heart. "She is the living duplicate of the woman I have pined for all these long, lonely years!" Yukio sighed to himself, leaning back in his computer chair. Slowly, a threatening grin spread over his thick lips. "And she will be _mine." _

Meanwhile, voyeurs upon voyeurs, the red-haired sister leaned back from her viewing globe. "How does this fat little man play in to your master plan to get the man to decide to become a woman permanently? If anything, having a pervert like that after me would make me want to go back to being a man faster than you could say Bibidi, Bobbidy, Boo!"

"He's not part of my plan," the green-haired sister answered, emerging from the bathroom with newly-dyed black hair. "I am just keeping an eye on him in case he interferes with my plans. Right now, he is just an idiot, but if he becomes an obstruction I will take care of him in short order. How do I look?" she asked, flipping her new black hair forward.

"Like yourself, only with black hair. Am I supposed to be impressed?"

"You will see when the time is right for us to make our move, sister. You will see."

A/N: There is an R rated version of this chapter. If people are interested, I will let everyone know when I get around to posting the higher-rated versions, probably on another site.


	8. A mouth in the gift horse

Akabane awoke the next morning with high hopes. He took a deep breath, yanked down the covers, and… sighed in misery. "Hello down there," he dryly said, referring to the still-present female chest. "I had rather thought you would have moved out by today. You are freeloading on my hospitality, you know."

He stretched out. He was going to have to go grocery shopping today. The only pair of female clothes he had was beginning to smell a little bit funny from having been worn so many days in a row…

He rubbed his aching head as he got out a Styrofoam tray of take-out to reheat for brunch. What had been wrong with him last night? He was not one to act on his impulses, and he was not one to take sexual activity lightly. He prided himself in his reserved, quiet nature. Then why in the world, he wondered to himself, had he been practically throwing himself at Ginji? It wasn't like him…

He padded back into the main room and picked up the white shirt. "No buttons, strange smell…" He threw it down and picked up the pants. "Safety-pinned together at the sides, really strange smell…" He threw those down as well, picking up the underwear he'd left scattered across the floor. "Really, really strange smell," he declared, throwing those in the hamper. He paused to sniff himself. He didn't think he smelled as weird as his clothes did. At least, he hoped he didn't. He wasn't quite sure what a normal woman smell was, as most of the women he had dated wore perfumes to mask it.

Well, there was always the clothes his client had disturbingly gifted him. After trying on the undergarments to discover that they actually did fit, he pulled on what he took to be a top. Only after getting it on did he realize that it was, indeed, a complete dress. A complete dress if one needed to cover only from what was necessary to avoid being arrested of the chest to just under the swell of the butt. It covered so little of his chest that it looked as if the rest were attempting to claw its way to freedom.

Frowning, Akabane went to evaluate the gift in his bathroom mirror. Only then did he realize it was supposed to look like a black nurses' uniform. He made a very disgusted face at it in the mirror. "I dislike puns," he said to no one in particular. "Especially doctor puns. If it exists, I have heard it a hundred times, and it probably was not funny the first time."

No. He would not wear it. It was far too revealing. As he was about to take it off, a little voice spoke up in his head. "Why not at least try it?" the little voice asked. "You are so old-fashioned, wearing clothes that cover you from your chin to your feet. What harm could it do to wear something just a little sexier?"

He looked down at his chest, then back up at himself and decided to argue with the little voice in his head. "Have you forgotten that changing into a female has not taken away my sense of modesty?"

"What you mean is, hasn't taken away those scars."

"I've never been embarrassed by my scars," Akabane argued back. He was getting a little bit tired of arguing with himself. After all, he'd made his decision. If only he could get himself to agree…

"Then explain why you hide yourself behind so many layers of clothes that you sweat yourself to heat exhaustion in the summer months," the little voice argued, tone childish and slightly snippy. "Come on, just wear it out once. I'm sure Giiiinji-kun would love to see it, when you go to make sure he and Ban haven't decided to go back on your agreement."

Akabane hesitated. Ginji-kun… the expression on his face when he saw this outfit _would_ be worth the humiliation actually wearing the outfit in public would cause. He was also imagining the look on Ban-kun's face. Ban did seem to have a weakness for beautiful women. He liked the ladies almost as much as he liked money, with the emphasis in that sentence being on the word almost.

"I will wear it out, but no one will know I did," he told the little voice in his head, pulling on his trench coat and buttoning up every last button on it. He made a face at the resulting appearance in the mirror. "It looks as if I am naked underneath my coat now."

"Leave your coat open then," the voice suggested. "Let them stare!" Akabane did not know it, but the voice in his head was what was commonly referred to as his 'biological clock.' For his body was a bit older, and while he was completely unaware of it, his newly acquired female ovaries were busy ovulating. Thus, his biological clock was putting in its two cents. Those two cents, essentially, boiled down to "Find a mate, have a baby before it's too late. Find a mate, have a baby before it's too late. Find a mate, have a baby before it's too late." Over, and over, and over again.

Of course, this pitted his clock against his brain. Even the change to a female body had not changed what his brain wanted. His brain wanted to become more powerful, to fight any male it should happen to encounter. His brain wanted to defeat the Get Backers in battle to prove that his battle skills were superior to theirs. His reproductive organs, on the other hand, wanted to jump on any male carrying suitable genes for offspring it should happen to encounter. The clock wanted to peel the Get Backer's clothes off, prove something about reproductive skills, and to carry superior heirs.

As he went out that day, he was completely oblivious to the fact that his fighting instincts and his biological clock were squaring off. A no-holds-barred grudge match, it truly would be. The crowd gathered in hushed silence as the two contestants put on their boxing gloves. The prize? Control of his body, of course.

Meanwhile, on the other end of town, Ginji twitched and turned in the front seat of Ban's Ladybug. He was making little pained noises deep in his throat as he tossed and turned. In his dream, he was facing off with the female Akabane, and she did not look happy at all. "It's been nine months since you promised to get my male body back, Ginji-kun," she said, eyes misty with tears. "And now it is too late!"

"Don't say that, Akabane-san," Ginji insisted. He hated seeing a woman cry, even if it was a woman Akabane. "We'll get your body back, we will!"

"No, it is much too late," she sniffled, wiping her eyes.

"Why?" Ginji asked. "Why is it too late?"

"Because… because if go back to being a man, what will happen to our son!" the female Akabane asked, pointing angrily to a baby carriage. In the carriage, a giant battery was lying there, wearing a diaper and sucking on a pacifier with a light bulb attached.

Ginji woke up then, sitting straight up in the seat, eyes blank white circles. "What a scary dream," he commented, saying it rather loudly to try to reassure himself.

"Mmm, Ginji, stop talking," Ban muttered, a pillow shoved over his head. "My head hurts. Feels like a hangover. Little noises so loud… What happened to me?"

"Ano…" Ginji began, whispering. "You got hurt and so Akabane-san and I drove you to Gen's place, and he gave you a really strong anesthetic because he had to stitch up your-" Ginji stopped, then lowered his voice even further as he pointed to his groin, "man bits."

Ban pulled the pillow further over his aching head. "How did I get hurt?"

"Eto… Akabane-san… didn't like it when you grabbed her boobies."

Ban lifted the pillow up, eyebrow raised. "Ginji, Jackal is a man. He doesn't have breasts."

"He said someone cast a spell on him and made him into a girl, and then he or she had big boobies like this!" Ginji said, holding up two of the melons that he'd stolen out of Akabane's fridge last night "Then you were all woo-woo-woo and singing," Ginji said, flapping his arms around in a jelly-like fashion for emphasis, "and Akabane-san said 'Get back my male body,' and you said yes and I was going to say no, but she put her chest in my face like this," he said, sticking the melons right in Ban's face, "and my mouth wouldn't work right! I'm sorry, Ban-chan!" Ginji wept.

"Calm down, Ginji. Now, you said I was on anesthetics, right?"

"Mmm, mmm," Ginji nodded, trying to dry his tare-tears.

"Then our agreement with Jackal is invalid. Contracts can't be negotiated when one party is drunk or drugged."

Ban's words failed to comfort the tare-Ginji. "But… but… Akabane-san will get mad if we tell her that…"

Ban sat up, wincing at the pain of his freshly-stitched wounds. "Too bad for him. What is he going to do about it?" He stretched, trying to evaluate the extent of the damage and how it would affect his movements. If he was going to have a confrontation with Jackal, male or female, he wanted to know his limitations.

Ginji trembled, hiding behind the front seat rest. "She could get really mad and slice us up into itty-bitty bits?"

Ban reached up and ruffled Ginji's blonde hair condescendingly. "Don't worry, Ginji. I'll take care of everything. Now, let's just enjoy breakfast," he said, picking up one of the melons.

"Okay, if you say so, Ban-chan," Ginji answered. His voice had a strange tone in it, a tone of neither resignation nor acceptance. Ginji just did what Ban told him to, and generally, they managed to keep all their limbs intact. Of course, they were always broke on Ban's plans, but Ginji had enough faith in Ban to overlook that fact.

"These are pretty good melons, Ginji. How much did you spend on them?"

Ginji sighed, shoulders slumping forward. Of course Ban would follow up a compliment with a question about money. "Actually, Ban-chan, they were free. Akabane-san gave them to me when I went to her apartment."

Ban suddenly spit melon all over poor Ginji. "You went to Jackal's apartment!" he cried, hitting Ginji over the head. "What were you thinking? It could have been a trap! You would have been his prisoner and I would have had no way of finding you to save your butt! Worse, you could be dead!" he screamed, berating Ginji into the floor.

"But Ban-chan!" Ginji protested, "I couldn't let Akabane-san walk home alone in the dark. Someone might have hurt her!"

"Ginji, this is Jackal we're talking about, not some helpless waif. You were probably more in danger walking with Jackal than Jackal would have been alone!"

"It didn't seem right to make a girl walk alone at night," Ginji whimpered, head down, playing with his fingers to avoid having to look up at Ban's angry face. "No matter who that girl was."

"What if he/she'd killed you?" Ban snapped, not willing to put down the argument until Ginji admitted he was wrong.

"But she didn't, and it was the gentlemanly thing to do!" he said stubbornly, just knowing he was right.

"What are you two fighting about?" a familiar voice questioned. Ban and Ginji both jumped, causing Ginji to hit his head on the roof of the Lady Bug. "I could hear you shouting from halfway across the parking lot."

"Himiko! What are you doing here?" Ban asked, stopping to hold his wounded head. He was being so loud that he was irritating his own hangover. "And please be quiet, my head hurts."

"I'm grocery shopping," she said, holding up a plastic bag containing food products. "The question is what you are doing here, having a screaming match in the parking lot." Himiko grinned, "Who is she?"

"Who is who?" Ban groaned, lying back with a hand on his head.

"The girl who could cause a split in the iron-clad partnership that is the Get Backers," Himiko replied matter of factly. They had been arguing about Ginji's actions towards a woman; she'd heard them. She made a gesture with her hands, indicating that they should know who she was talking about. "Who is she?"

"She's no one," Ban snarled, glaring at Ginji to indicate that he hadn't forgotten last night's transgression.

"I am no one? I am hurt, Ban-kun."

Ginji spun around in alarm. "We're surrounded by transporters, Ban-chan!" Ginji cried, waving his arms in alarm.

"What are you doing here?" Ban snapped, glaring at Femme-bane. She was bending over so that the vast majority of her chest showed through the gap in her coat, causing Ginji to turn red and begin whistling out of his ears like a teapot.

"Ginji-kun left this at my apartment last night," Akabane answered perfectly innocently, holding up Ginji's moth-eaten wallet. "I stepped on it on my way out this morning, or I might not have noticed it." He made a bit of a face. "You left in such a hurry I almost thought you were _trying_ to hurt my feelings, Ginji-kun." His strange expression turned into a vicious smile. "You would not want to hurt my feelings, would you, Ginji-kun?"

"No, no, Akabane-san," Ginji said with a tremble in his voice.

"You got implants to win a bet?" Himiko suddenly cried, finding her voice again after having lost it at the sight of Akabreast. Her mouth was agape. "That's taking it a little far, don't you think?" She asked. After a pause, she added, "And why aren't you wearing anything under your coat?"

Akabane sighed, voice distant. "I have something on under it," he answered, opening his coat. Ginji's nose started bleeding again, so Ban threw a box of tissues at his head.

"Why are you dressed like a cheap hooker?"

"I had no other female-fitting clothes," Akabane answered, shutting his coat. That was not very nice of Himiko, to accuse him of purposefully looking like a slut. It was not his fault his client was a pervert.

"And why did you happen to have that dress, then?" she asked, a vein appearing on her forehead. Her hand was twitching itself into a pummeling fist.

"It is not my choice; a client sent it to me. He requested I wear it, but it was not really my desire to do so. I had no other female clothes. As for my chest, these are not implants. I just woke up one morning with them, which explains why I had not prepared for their arrival. You may ask Ban-kun if they are real. As hard as he squeezes, if they were implants he would have burst them."

Himiko and Ban turned red at the same time, but not for the same reasons. "Why were you squeezing his chest?" Himiko asked slowly, taking deep breaths, the vein on her head becoming more pronounced and beginning to throb. Both her hands were curled into fists by that point.

"I- I thought he was Hevn!" Ban cried, hands thrown up in a gesture of defensive innocence. Well, at least one hand was thrown up. The other was protecting his already injured man-bits.

"And that excuses it?" Himiko shouted, burying her pummeling fist in Ban's skull.

Ginji caught the wavering Ban, who had pain stars dancing in his eyes. "Himiko-chan, Ban-chan is injured! Don't hit him!"

Himiko just rolled her eyes, reaching out and grabbing Akabane by the wrist. "Come on, we're leaving."

"But… but… I wanted to ask them about my case!" Akabane protested as Himiko dragged him away. Realizing that she had no intention to stop, he glanced over his shoulder and menacingly called, "Do not forget that we had an agreement!"

Himiko dragged a reluctant Akabane all the way to her motorbike. "Get in," she ordered. "We have to talk." She threw the bag of groceries in his hands. "Carry these." She swung her leg over the side of the bike. "Come on, I don't have all day."

Akabane sighed and did as she ordered. Over time working with her, he'd learned it was best to just keep the peace and do what she asked of him. She glanced over her shoulder at him as they pulled out of the small parking lot. "I'm not buying that you didn't buy falsies, at least, to prove your point."

"Mmm… in this outfit, you can tell that they are attached to my skin," he pointed out, literally pointing at the swell of his chest under his black jacket.

"Then you really _did_ get implants just to prove a point?" Himiko asked. Akabane didn't like the way she weaved in and out of traffic while talking to him in a highly agitated voice.

"As I believe I said, they were not implants. I woke up female for no apparent cause," he insisted. At least Himiko was reacting wit the shock and disbelief he'd expected and which he had not received from the Get Backers.

"I don't _believe_ what you believe you said," Himiko emphasized, diving her bike out of the way of a menacing truck. She pulled into the parking spaces in front of her own small apartment. "Help me carry the groceries up," she ordered.

He obliged her, following her silently. "If you got those things because you wanted to, I guess it is not my place to say anything. If you got them just to prove me wrong, I think you're impulsive and stupid," she finished, opening her door. "Put them on the counter, if you would."

He did, and then turned around. "Himiko-chan, if you must be insistent I can prove to you that I was transformed into a woman, and that I did not seek implants." Before Himiko could ask how, he grabbed the end of the short skirt and yanked it up around his waist. "See?"

Himiko stood, staring and blinking, for a good two minutes before slamming her apartment door shut. "Put that thing down!" She screamed.

He obeyed her. "What is wrong, Lady Poison? We are both females here," he innocently declared.

"Women don't pull their pants up or down like male high-school shenanigans!" she screamed, arms flailing. "The last thing I wanted to know what that Dr. Jackal wears women's underpants!"

He felt insulted. "That was not the point. The point was that I am severely lacking in body parts I would very much like to get… to have returned to me." He was afraid that saying get back might set her off again. "Do you need a closer look?"

"You leave that skirt down," she ordered, waving an angry finger in his face, "And I promise to believe you." She sighed, letting out a breath of angry air. "You can't just go flashing your panties at people! Men may think that underwear showing is funny, but if you do that as a woman you'll likely end up getting molested!"

He made an innocent, hurt face. His hands were clasped together in front of his body. "You wound me. I have not even shown Ginji-kun my nice new panties."

"You had better keep it that way," Himiko warned. "Ban would kill you if you tried anything." She paused in her tirade to take a breath. "You said a client gave you that dress. Did they also…?"

"Give me the underwear? Yes."

She snorted, beginning to put her groceries away. "A rather unprofessional gift, if you ask me."

"I agree, but I had no other female garments to wear. I am not in the habit of owning women's clothes just because." He frowned when he noticed the time on Himiko's wall clock. "And it has gotten late enough that I do not have time to buy a change of clothes before meeting with my client. Well, he did request that I wear this…"

Himiko suddenly dropped the tomatoes she'd been intending to put in her refrigerator. She spun around as Akabane reached down and grabbed a runaway fruit.

"Don't do that, I can see all the way down your shirt. The client, does he resemble a penguin in a cheap purple suit? With a thick Osakan accent?"

"Yes, Himiko-chan. Do you know my client? I was under the impression that he was new at hiring transporters." He didn't notice it, but he was gently squeezing the tomato he'd picked up.

"His name is Fujimoto, isn't it?" Akabane nodded. "He's definitely not new to it. Almost no female transporters, disposers, or protectors will work for him."

Akabane frowned. He had an idea of why, but he chose to ask rather than guess. "Why is that?"

"The better question would be, why not? He gets really possessive and insists that because he hired them once, he owns them. He has his thugs attack their boyfriends and their other clients. He even attempted to have a disposer kidnapped last year, but she disposed of his agents. After that, all the underworld women blacklisted him. Of course, being a male transporter, you probably never heard of him."

"Yes. We men do not usually have to deal with worries like those."

"Cancel your meeting. Don't go."

"I may be late, but I have never failed to meet a client," Akabane coldly informed her. "Just because I am female does not mean I intend to start now."

"He could do something to you," Himiko warned.

Akabane flicked out a few blades. "I will be fine, Lady Poison. After all, I am not really a woman."

"You look like one, which means you have to play by our rules."

He shrugged. "You may do as you will, but I will not disappoint my client." He slammed the door behind him, leaving Himiko with a worried look on her pretty face. Jackal was leading himself right into a trap, and refused to acknowledge it.

Rather than just sit around and brood about it, she decided she was going to do something. Yes, she was, but it was not going to be worrying about him. He was a big boy, or girl, and he'd made his bed. Now he'd have to lie in it.

She decided a trip down to the Honky Tonk to further berate Ban for his breast touching habits was in order. Perhaps that would lift her spirits, she thought as she walked in the direction of the bar. Nearing it, she spotted a pair of familiar shorts and sneaker-clad legs sticking out of the trash can. "Ban must have lost his temper again, huh?" he asked as he freed Ginji.

Ginji picked a banana peel off his head. "He did, but he only stormed off. He didn't stick me in the trash can." Ginji posed himself so that he resembled a large ape, knuckles on the ground. "A big gorilla-man walked in and asked me if I knew Akabane-san. All I said was yes and he threw me in the trash and told me never to call her again," Ginji whined, dignity hurt by the trash incident.

A large frown crossed Himiko's face. "I knew it!" she snapped. "Come on, that idiot Jackal's ego is getting him in trouble right now. If we go save him, maybe we can make him eat some humble pie."

"Humble pie?" Ginji asked, face blank and mouth watering. "Is it any good? Do you think he'll share?" Ginji asked, as Himiko dragged him towards her apartment. She had to go get her bike. "Shouldn't we get Ban-chan first?"

"Forget him; he'd just complain and refuse to go. Let's hurry." She absolutely could not wait to see the humiliated look on Jackal's face when he/she realized not only had Himiko been right, but she'd saved his multiple-gendered butt.

Author's note: sniffle I'm so lonely, and not to mention sick. I'll update when I can, but working fifty plus hours a week really takes the energy out of me.


	9. Another boring plot chapter

Meanwhile, back at the restaurant, Akabane very reluctantly handed over his hat and coat to the smiling girl at the coat check. Not only did it leave him in the bare minimum that the dress provided, but he hated letting strangers handle his personal possessions. Carry over from his job, he supposed. It was not something worth worrying about at the moment.

A couple of eyes turned in his general direction as he followed the waiter to the back of the restaurant. The place seemed entirely patronized by greasy businessmen, not afraid to take in an eyeful when their trophy wives were not about. The décor was done in reds and browns, as if intended to hide bloodstains. A rich red carpet and dark brown walls was the perfect combination for such a thing.

"You wore it!" Fujimoto Yukio cried gleefully when Akabane joined him and his bodyguard/assistant at a booth.

"All my other clothes were dirty," Akabane answered honestly, trying to make sure he wasn't flashing anyone as he sat down.

Fujimoto grinned, waving a chubby wing-like arm at the other patrons. "It suits you. Look at them stare jealously. When God made you, he said 'today I am going to make one man happy, and a hundred men green with envy."

Akabane shifted in the chair, uncomfortable. A waiter came over to take drink orders, which Akabane declined. Not caring, Fujimoto ordered a Blood Mary for Akabane. Akabane was not sure if that was meant to be a pun or not, but if it was, it only served to remind him of how much he hated puns.

"Do you have a job for me?" he asked, watching the bored bodyguard sip at an amazingly large class of soda.

"Not exactly. I do, however, want to sign an exclusivity contract with you."

Akabane raised an eyebrow cautiously, squirming in his seat. The seat fabric was sticking to his bare legs from the humidity. "So you wish to use no one else but me as a transporter? That might be a problem if you have an urgent need and I have another job lined up."

"You don't understand. I want you to only transport for me." The idea of another man touching his beautiful butterfly…

"I am sorry; I cannot accept such an offer. Monogamy is not my style. Do you have a job to offer me right now?" he asked, placing one hand on the table and leaning his weight onto it, preparing to stand up and leave if the answer came back as a negatory.

"No, but…"

"Then we have nothing more to discuss," Akabane commented. "Goodnight." He began to stand up at the same time the bodyguard began to stand. The bodyguard knocked over his soda all over Akabane's chest, causing him to cry out as ice went into his bra.

"I'm so sorry! Let me help you dry off," the assistant apologize.

"No!" Akabane snapped, picking up a towel and blotting at his wet chest. "Do not touch me. As much as I appreciate the irony of adding insult to injury, I can dry myself." After a few wasted minutes and the realization that he was not going to dry, he gave up and threw the towel down. "And now, goodnight, gentlemen."

As he turned to leave, a sudden pain struck him like a hammer to the chest. He fell backwards, landing in the booth, holding his hands over his heart. Another pain shot through him like Ginji's electricity, causing him to double over.

"Do you like your dress, my dear? When it gets hit with carbonated fluid, it gives off a fast-acting but very painful sedative."

Akabane growled. "We are in a crowded restaurant. Someone is going to see this." He continued holding his chest, trying to get off the seat. He'd fallen back into a soda puddle, so the pain was now spreading through his shoulder blades.

"A crowded restaurant full of men both used to drunks and keeping their mouths shut," Fujimoto grinned. "You must be feeling very sleepy by now."

It was not his style to do so, but Akabane might have used a few choice words had he not already collapsed onto the seat. Unnoticed by Fujimoto, however, a single blade had slipped from between his fingers and fallen to the carpet, where it remained. Fujimoto gestured to his guard. "Take her around to my car." He grinned down on the body of the fallen transporter. "I always get what I want."

About half an hour later, Himiko and Ginji arrived on the scene. "He's still here," Himiko noted as they snuck into the area at the front of the restaurant. She pointed to a familiar coat and hat that had been forgotten inside the coat check when Akabane had been forcibly removed from the building.

"But how do we get inside?" Ginji asked, pointing to the wait station blocking the entrance. "It looks too fancy for the way we're dressed!"

Himiko looked around, her eyes settling on a set of decorative bushes. "I have an idea."

Strangely, no one noticed a bunch of bushes slipping sideways into the restaurant. They should have, but like most businessmen of the upper crust they were too wrapped up in how good they looked to notice. "I don't see Akabane-san," Ginji whispered.

"I don't either," she whispered back, frowning. "Something must have happened." A glinting object caught her eye. "Over there, under that table," she whispered.

Ginji and Himiko crept over, hidden by bushes. Ginji's hand carefully darted out of the bush and snatched it from beneath the feet of the men sitting there. It cut him. "Ouch," he whispered. "It hurts!"

"I thought I saw a blue glint," Himiko whispered back, taking it. "A scalpel! Something must have happened. Akabane wouldn't leave his clothes and a scalpel behind for no reason."

One of the businessmen suddenly looked over, as a bush had started dropping leaves on his expensive coat. "Hey, there are a couple of spies here listening to our business deal!" he screamed, leaping up on his chair like a cartoon woman spotting a mouse. The whole room turned to face the commotion.

"Let's go!" Himiko shouted. The two leaped out of the bushes, Ginji going over the nearest table at the same time Himiko went under. In the resulting chaos, food flew everywhere. A few businessmen cried out as the delicious soy sauce went all over their multiple hundred dollar white dress shirts, leaving stains that not even the most deft dry cleaners could remedy.

"Get them!" someone shouted, in the moment before a strange smell reduced many of the men to gibbering like monkies. An electric blast courtesy of Ginji took out the men who had attempted to pull their guns. They fell into an unconscious mass on the floor.

"This way!" Himiko called, leading as Ginji followed. She took out a security guard with a direct punch to the face. She threw a chair onto its side, tripping up two men who had been attempting to rush her. As she looked over to make sure Ginji was still behind her, she noticed him carrying a black bundle. "You saved Akabane's clothes!" she asked in surprise. She jumped onto her bike and began revving it as Ginji launched himself into the passenger basket.

"Well, he seems kind of attached to them…" Ginji explained as she shot towards the exit ramp, pushing a gun-toting man into a puddle with her foot as they passed. Unbeknownst to her, a thousand-dollar suit was lost that day, and that did not even include the suits Ginji had thrown food on back in the restaurant. "How do we find where they took Akabane-san?" Ginji asked, holding onto the bundle with both hands.

"Get his cell phone out of the pocket and see if he has an entry for Kiki," Himiko said, trying to concentrate on escaping their pursuers.

It took Ginji a moment to figure out how the phone worked. "Here she is!" he said proudly.

"Call her and ask where to find Fujimoto. Tell her that he's got one of our girls." After a very awkward call, Ginji looked nervously up at Himiko. "Did she tell you?" Himiko asked.

"She gave me the address, but… I think I'm engaged!"

"Kiki can be like that. Everyone was surprised when she turned Fujimoto down," Himiko shrugged. "Give me the address. We're busting in."

Ginji fiddled with his fingers in the sidecar. "Ano... Himiko-san? You don't seem to like Akabane-san very much... How come you're so determined to save him?"

"So I can rub it in his face that I saved his life, and get him to stop taunting me with reminders of the time he saved my life," she answered shortly. "It wasn't even like I was in that much danger. Geeze, he doesn't need to gloat about it every time we disagree on a job!" Himiko fumed, diving dangerously in and out of traffic. Ginji covered his eyes. Perhaps he shouldn't have asked...

A/N: I still don't own Get Backers. Also, a note on the use of "he" and "she" to refer to female Akabane… what pronoun is used reflects on what the person thinking about Akabane would refer to Akabane as. Akabane uses he because he doesn't admit he's female. Fujimoto uses she because he knows Akabane as nothing else but a woman. To the reviewer who asked: Of course I am a fan of Akabane-san. If I were not, I would have put him in a sailor fuku. looks over and sees Akabane muse inching towards the door.

My advice to Yami? Give your clock a few years. :P


	10. Dressripping action to the rescue

Akabane's vision began to fade back into functionality as he regained consciousness a few hours later. He was lying on his back on some kind of hard surface. His arms were raised above his head, metal bands tightened around his fingers. He tested the strength of the binds by tugging slightly on the chains. They did not move even slightly. A frown played over his thin lips and his pale purple eyes narrowed in contemplation.

"They were especially made for you," Fujimoto commented as he entered the room, grinning through the layers of fat hanging about his mouth. On either side, one of his thug-like assistants trailed behind. "The look on your face suggests you are just realizing now that you can't close your hands, and if you can't close your hands, you can't draw your weapons." He leaned over and grabbed Akabane by the neck, smiling. His expression soured to disappointment when he realized his pretty prisoner remained indifferent to his gloating. He'd expected to see flames of rage in her pretty eyes.

"They were made by your friend, the Artist. Of course, he didn't want to. It wasn't until we painted an impressionist rose garden in his blood that he gave in. A momentary look in your eyes betrays you- you are surprised that we were able to find out about your weapons provider. I know everything about you from the size of your bra to the birthmark you've got on your left hip. Every inch of your life and your body is mine!" he crowed.

"You are wrong," Akabane said, voice completely toneless.

"Excuse me? You beg to differ, even in your current state?" he asked, putting a hand on the restraints for emphasis.

"I do not have a birthmark. You are wrong."

He started to move forward, then backed up. "You only want me to come closer because you're planning something. You're clever, but not clever enough." He turned to the assistant standing on his left. "Watch over her while I'm out. But remember- I'll kill you if you touch her. She's _mine._" With that, he signaled to his other thugs to leave the room. They followed him out like obedient pups.

After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, Akabane turned his head over to face the young, nervous assistant. "Your hands are shaking. You must have some reason to be afraid of me," he grinned.

The assistant grasped his gun tighter in sweaty palms. "Don't move!" he ordered.

Akabane shrugged and rattled the restraints. "You believe that I can?" He glanced about the room. "Such a boring room. No decorations, no personality. Just grey walls."

"You can't fool me! I won't talk to you!" the frightened brunette whimpered.

"Do as you will. You should know, though, that I become very dangerous when I am bored, and this room is boring me." He grinned broadly at the boy with his mouth closed tightly, and then drew up one leg in order to flash a well-toned thigh at the boy.

The young guard hiccupped, tightening his grip around his gun until his knuckles became white ridges. The silence between them was deafening. Too loud, in fact, for Akabane's tastes. "Boy?"

The boy jumped, nearly dropping his weapon. Akabane make a sound of disappointment and shook his head. "You should pay more attention, boy. If you allow yourself to be distracted, you might end up dead." He paused. "What is your name?"

"I'm not telling you!"

"Is that so? What a pity. I was hoping we could make friendly conversation."

"You'll try to kill me! That, and the boss doesn't want me talking to you…"

"Yes, I suppose I might try to kill you. Do not take it personally. I do that to everyone."

The boy stared in confusion at the person he was supposed to be guarding. He'd been warned not to talk to his boss' hostage, lest he become drawn in as though by the song of a siren and his cold body be collected off the floor by a coroner. She didn't seem very threatening, though. In fact, she was rather quite pretty…

He shook the thought out of his head. "My boss will kill me if I talk to you," the boy whimpered.

"He did not say that we could not talk, just that you should not touch. Although… could you perhaps do me a favor?" he asked, voice as smooth as velvet.

"I'm not doing anything for you!" the boy cried, remaining firmly unwilling to get any closer to the purple-eyed woman.

"Not even pulling my skirt down? I've wiggled around until it's up higher than I'd prefer. You would not want your boss to think that was your fault, would you?"

"I… no! I'm not coming over there!"

"Please?"

"No!"

Just to be annoying, Akabane wiggled around further until the skirt really was pushed up as far as it could go without flashing a panty shot. "Your boss will not be happy with you if he thinks you are the one that moved my hemline."

"I'll tell him you did it!"

"Here is my question: Do you think he will believe you, or do you think he will jump to the conclusion that you have infringed on his rights?"

The boy did not answer, but the way he was biting his lip suggested that he was listening. Finally, with caution in his tone, he said "If I pull your skirt down, will you stop wriggling around and hiking it up?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die, if that is satisfactory to you."

The boy crept a bit closer. Well, the worst she could do was kick him… It couldn't hurt anything to take just a little peak at her panties. After all, his boss would never know…

He leaned down, trembling hand reaching for the hem. Akabane swung his legs up, wrapping them tightly around the boy's neck. The boy, realizing he'd been had, tried to cry out. Unfortunately, his voice was not faster than the speed with which Akabane was able to twist the young assistant's neck between his muscular thighs. There was a satisfying crack sound, and the teen fell to the ground with the crack of bone.

"Rule one: Never assume that just because I can not use my hands does not mean I can not hurt you," Akabane sighed, shaking his head. "Mooks are just not as much fun these days as they used to be." He looked down at the boy, blank eyes staring upwards from where he'd fallen. "At least you died with a nice view," Akabane smirked cruelly, referring to what the boy had been attempting to do in the last moments before his death.

Now came the hard part: getting out of the binds without the use of his scalpels. The boy wasn't important enough to have been given keys, not that he would have been able to unlock the restraints with his feet anyway. He was flexible, but not _that_ flexible. If he were, well… he wouldn't need anyone else to please him sexually ever again.

This was not going to feel good at all, but it was necessary if he was going to free himself. He brought his left foot up and began kicking himself violently just about his right ankle, trying to break open his skin with the sharp end of the heel on his shoes. It took several kicks, since his skin was generally resistant to attack, but he finally managed to tear through his own flesh and start an outpouring of blood.

He rubbed the heel up against the open wound, dousing it in blood. He guessed that had to be one of the advantages of the particular form of 'blood magic' he had been trained in: the ability to transform even a high-heel into a lethal weapon with only the power of his blood came in handy in situations like that.

After getting the bloodstained high heeled shoe off of his foot, he used it as an attack weapon to go after the restraints. They were strong and held tight, requiring him to strike clumsily at them several times in a row. He was frustrated by his lack of accuracy, but he'd never actually practiced trying to attack something with the end of a shoe before.

He stood up, rubbing his wrists. The Artist had done a good job. He would not have been able to draw his weapons or break those restraints if he _had_ actually been forced to rely only on his hands to utilize his abilities. It had pointed out a fundamental weakness in his abilities that he had never really considered before- he did have to be able to close his hands to activate his normal weaponry. Good thing he did not consider himself limited to only his usual fighting abilities or he never would have gotten out of there.

He reached out to grab the handle of the door… only for the door to come flying out and smashing him square in the face, slamming his small frame into the wall with the sheer force of the impact. "Akabane-san, we're here to rescue you!" Ginji declared, posing dramatically in the doorway. He appeared to be wearing the greasy uniform of a pizza delivery boy. Himiko, similarly clad, stood behind him. "Akabane-san?" Ginji asked, looking around.

"That's funny, I was certain I smelled his particular scent coming from this room," Himiko said, frowning.

Ginji looked all around. "Akabane-san? Akabane-ACK!" he cried when he realized there was something behind the door. He pulled the door away, only for a battered Akabane to crumple into his arms. "Akabane-san, are you all right?"

"You smashed me with the door," he answered, holding his nose. At least it wasn't bleeding. More importantly, why hadn't he heard Ginji and Himiko coming from the other side of the door? Normally he was able to pick up on such things.

"Sorry, Akabane-san! We're here to rescue you."

"If rescuing me involves breaking my nose, I think I would rather be in danger," he answered dryly.

"Nevermind your nose," Himiko said in frustration. "We have to get out of here before the guys chasing us catch up. The front door is this way," Himiko said, waving an arm in guidance.

"I thought it was that way?" Ginji asked in confusion, pointing the other direction.

"Trust me, Ginji-kun, we wish to follow Lady Poison's guidance," Akabane said, limping up next to Ginji.

"You're limping," Himiko pointed out.

"I know."

Himiko frowned and made a growling noise. "You can't run like that. Ginji, carry Akabane!"

"Me!" Ginji asked, pointing to himself in alarm.

"Jackal's ankle is bleeding. He/she can't run like that."

"I…"

"Just do it!" Himiko shouted.

Ginji let out a whimpered cry. "O… okay, Himiko-chan…" Thus, Ginji found himself running down the hallway with a wounded Akabane on his back, arms wrapped tightly around his neck. Akabane's volumous breasts were pressed against his back. Ginji could feel the movement of the warm mounds against his shoulder blades every time he jolted Akabane too hard, causing him to blush furiously. If literal steam would have been coming out of his ears, he would have whistled like a teakettle.

Himiko froze. "They're coming from both directions. Quick, duck into this room until they go past," she said, pulling open the nearest white door. The three ducked inside the darkened room, pulling the door shut and backing away in silence as the sound of angry shouts and muffled footsteps drifted in from the other side.

"I do not understand why we are running away. I could take care of them…" he threatened in a whisper. He waved a handful of blades, illuminating their faces with the light cast from the scalpels.

Without warning, Ginji suddenly grabbed Akabane's wrist tightly. "No killing," he demanded, face dead serious and threatening. A shiver ran down Akabane's spine. Now this was exciting… and also irritating at the same time. He tore himself free from Ginji's grasp.

"You would not have dared to grab me like that if I still had my male body," he hissed, still whispering.

"Shut up!" Himiko whispered, referring to the fact that voices were still coming from outside the door. After a few tense moments, the outside hall fell quiet. The three stood slowly up, Akabane still using Ginji as a crutch.

"They're gone. Let's open the window and get-"

The lights came on suddenly as the door was thrown open. Fujimoto and his thugs, armed to the teeth with guns, flooded into the room. Akabane's hand twitched, ready to draw scalpels, but none appeared. "The ball is in your court, Ginji-kun," he whispered threateningly. "Show me a reason not to kill them and I will defer to your will."

Himiko, meanwhile, was looking around in disgust at the room's decorations. Not a centimeter of the room wasn't decorated in dead animals. Hundreds of preserved butterflies, frozen wings of every color imaginable, stared out from behind glass on every available wall space. The preserved corpses of two mountain cats fought an eternal battle on a shelf. Majestic birds, positioned to look as if they were not mere dead shells, hovered on their perches as if in mid take-off.

"They're all dead," she whispered.

"Not dead, eternally alive!" Fujimoto shouted in anger, waving his arms. A tip of blue light appeared at the ready between Akabane's fingers, but before he could move further, Ginji stepped directly in front of him and stretched out his arms. From Fujimoto's point of view, he was protecting Akabane from him. From Akabane's point of view, he was projecting the thugs from _him_.

Fujimoto shrugged and gestured to a pair of birds near Himiko. "Only five were left in existence. I purchased these two because I had to have their beautiful feathers. When I learned the females learn their brilliant colors upon laying… well, I couldn't let that happen! So I had them stuffed and mounted to preserve their eternal beauty."

"And effectively destroyed a species for the sake of your selfish pleasures?" Himiko answered him back, enraged. She was clutching one of her poison perfumes tightly.

"Why do people keep saying that? They were only animals- much as you are. Every beautiful human has grown old and lost her glamour. That is why I must have her… to preserve her," Fujimoto said, eyes full of an odd light as he stared at Akabane. It was an expression somewhere between madness-insanity- and blinding rage. "I want her forever young and beautiful. She should thank me."

"Pre-preserve?" Ginji asked, staring. "You're sick!"

"Yes, I am sick. I am lovesick. I am sick of a world where women like her are not kept on the pedestals where they belong. Forcing her to walk around with common men like you and ugly… men-women like her…"

Himiko growled, but because she was a professional, she knew better than to attack out of anger. Fujimoto grinned at her and continued as his thugs lowered their guns. "She's MINE, and I'm not going to share her with anyone. Even if that means putting her under glass and formaldehyde! As for you two- you have imperfections. Like any decent collector, I refuse the imperfect ones. Dispose of them without hurting my butterfly!"

"Let's get out of this twisted science-fair project!" Himiko quipped to Ginji and Akabane, who nodded in agreement.

Before the three could take so much as a step forward to face the oncoming rush of thugs, Himiko suddenly reached up and grabbed her ears. "What's that sound? It hurts!" she cried. Akabane had fallen to his knees and was holding his head in a similar fashion. Ginji was lying on his side, twitching in pain.

"Do you like it?" Fujimoto laughed. "My house is equipped with ultrasonic attack equipment. My men and I wear earplugs against it." Ginji tried to get up, but the pain was just too much. It was like Akabane was shooting scalpels one after another into his brain for target practice. "Stop moving. In a few minutes your brains will bleed out your ears. Not the most pleasant death for my pretty butterfly, but once she's preserved you won't be able to te-"

Before he could finish his sentence, the window to the outside burst open. The group shielded themselves as glass flew about their skin, littering the floor in shards of crystal and drops of crimson blood.

"What was that?" Fujimoto shouted as he lowered his hands from a defensive position. He looked up, and for a second he thought he saw something like the eyes of a snake dance in his mind before the new sound began. Voices, thousands of voices gently whispering, barely louder than a soft breeze.

The head of a dead bird snapped around. Glass eyes stared accusingly at Fujimoto. "You murdered us and called it beauty!" the bird accused. Its sharp beak was pointed directly at Fujimoto.

"What- what the hell is going on?" Fujimoto asked, backing away.

"Our lives went to rot so that you could possess our pelts," one of the dead cats hissed, crawling stiffly from its perch. "Now you do it to your own kind!"

The dead insects began to twitch on their display pins. "We were living things, not possessions!" their hundred voices mournfully wailed. "You would slaughter all as though it were!"

The dead, great and small, began to rise up and stumble towards Fujimoto and his gang. The glass covering the insect cases swelled and cracked as a thousand insect bodies thrashed against it. In a shower of broken shards, the insects tore free and the room filled with a whirl of broken exoskeletons.

The assistants screamed, covering their heads and fleeing blindly. Butterflies dove at them, scratching their hands and faces open with the sharp ends of the pins sticking through their bodies. Bodies collided as thugs frantically attempted to flee the room, dead mountain cats tearing at their legs as they passed. Fujimoto, rooted to his spot, could only stare as moth dive-bombed him, sharp pin heading straight for his left eye…

Then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. All the insects were back behind glass. The cats remained in battle, the birds still posed in mock flight. "What- what the hell was that!" an assistant muttered, crawling off the floor where he'd fallen. A large wet stain was spreading from his pants to the carpeting.

"Nevermind that, where are they?" Fujimoto snarled, pointing angrily at the now empty spot on the floor. On the wall, his sonic device looked as though someone had run a car over it. The broken window was the only part of the dream that remained, and it seemed to have provided an escape route. "After them!" Fujimoto howled.

Meanwhile, Himiko shouted angrily at Ban. "We had the situation under control!"

"The situation where you didn't bother to research the houses' defense systems before storming it?" he asked her back, equally angry sounding.

"Still, you didn't have to come busting through the window like Batman and 'save' us!" Mainly, she was mad that now Akabane would be able to claim that Ban had saved him and avoid having to admit a debt of gratitude to her.

"Some thanks I get," Ban growled. "After security dogs nearly took a bite out of my pants, too!"

"What's that about researching the houses' defenses then?" Himiko mocked.

"Maybe next time I won't save you!" he argued back.

"Guys, Akabane-san is waking up! That means the Jagan is over!" Ginji shouted. "Why did you have to use it on Akabane-san, too? That was just mean!"

"It wasn't my fault he looked directly at my eyes when I came through the window. This isn't the time to be arguing anyway, they'll be coming after us with guns any second now."

The four made it to the Lady Bug, waiting outside the gates. "I'm not leaving without my bike. You guys go on ahead, I'll catch up!" Himiko shouted, running off to where she'd hidden her bike before ambushing the pizza boys.

"Are you okay, Akabane-san?" Ginji asked as he put her in the back seat. She accidentally dropped Akabane, resulting in a temporary flash of panty. He blushed. The entire time he'd been carrying her, it had felt like he'd been getting little electric shocks. That couldn't mean anything… could it?

"Ginji, hurry up!" Ban shouted. Snapped back into reality, Ginji leaped into the car as Ban burned rubber down the road. "How did you find us, Ban-chan?" Ginji asked, still blushing from having seen a moment of panty.

"When Paul told me about the guy that threw you in the trash, I _knew_ it had something to do with that shemale," he answered. He glanced hostily back as a sleepy looking Akabane adjusted himself on the seat.

"Ban-chan, stop it." Ban missed a beat when Ginji said that. He knew defending Jackal was in Ginji's nature, but saying it so harshly…"I'm still glad you came. Ban-chan always saves me when I'm in trouble!" he grinned, his harsh demeanor suddenly dissipated into thin air.

Akabane looked down at his hands, trying to remove himself from the situation by shrinking into the seat. Ban-chan always saves you when you're in trouble. How nice for you…

"Hell!" Ban swore, jarring the other occupants of the car. "How did they find us?"

Noticing Ban's eyes uplifted to the rear view mirror, Akabane and Ginji spun around in their seats. A black car followed at break-neck speeds, Fujimoto clearly leaning out of the passenger side window. He was grinning so it looked as though his teeth might fall out of his mouth.

"Try to lose them?" Ginji suggested.

"I'm trying!" Ban shouted as they nearly clipped a semi. "They're following all my moves!" He tried diving on and off a series of off ramps, but as he reentered the highway, Fujimoto's car would appear each time. "They've got a hell of a driver…"

A flash of memory suddenly flooded like light through Ginji. It's like they're tracking us… that electrical buzz he'd felt when carrying Akabane! Kiki's words over the phone had been 'I told him I wasn't interested when I found out he'd bugged my bra so he would know if I was even _talking_ to other men!"

"Ban-chan, I know how they're tracking us!" Ginji cried, snapping his fingers.

"Well, don't just sit there, do something about it!"

"But Ban-chan…"

"NOW, GINJI!" Ban screamed.

"Hai, hai!" Ginji cried, undoing his seatbelt and clamouring over the cup holder, scrambling as the car swerved and skidded through traffic. He held his hands up in a position as if he were to bow, then said "Forgive me, Akabane-san." Then, without waiting for an answer, he grabbed the top of Akabane's dress and tore it open from top to bottom.


	11. Storm of my Eye

There was a moment of awkward silence before Ban and Akabane screamed, "What the hell do you think you're doing!" in unison. Akabane crossed one arm over his chest and used the other one to reach out and smack Ginji in the face before grabbing what was left of the torn dress.

"It's your clothes, Akabane-san!"" Ginji cried, holding his hands over his now-bleeding nose. "You have to take off your clothes!"

"What!" Ban demanded.

"There's a tracking device in Akabane-san's bra! I felt an electrical buzz when she got into the car!"

"Why did you not just say so, Ginji-kun?" Akabane asked, rolling his eyes. "In that case, you are more than welcome to take it off," he purred, holding his arms out in an open invitation to Ginji.

Ginji turned as red as a tomato as blood spurted out of his nose. He grabbed up a handful of tissues and stuffed them rather unattractively up his nose. "Noth thank, Akabane-than. You can tathe it oth youthelth," he mumbled.

"All right, all right. Close your eyes, Ginji-kun."

He did, and then felt a small electric buzz and soft fabric in his palms. He opened his eyes curiously to find the bra lying on his hands. "IE! Why'd you give it to me!" Ginji cried, jumping away from it as though it were a wild animal.

"Is the tracking device in there?" Akabane asked in frustration, one arm crossed over his chest.

"Oh. OH! I felt the buzz!"

"I hope you are referring to a buzz in your hand and not your…" Akabane paused and smirked. "Throw it out the window."

Ginji made a tare face. "A buzz in my what?" he asked, tossing the offending garment. He was trying his best not to look at Akabane, who was sitting there in just shoes and panties.

"Why are you blushing, Ginji-kun? You were the one who tore my dress in half."

"Ban-chan told me to hurry…"

"Don't you dare blame this on me!" Ban shouted from the front. He was having trouble focusing on losing their tails and arguing at the same time. The wheel of the car skipped in the gutter, causing Akabane to fall across the seat from the force of the impact. When Ginji realized that he had a bare breasted women lying in his lap, he let out a "MYERF!" noise and turned as white as a ghost. Quickly, he pulled off his green vest and put it over Akabane. "There," he squeaked nervously. "You can cover yourself with that."

"Thank you, Ginji-kun… but I do not understand why we have not managed to lose them yet."

Ginji and Ban both came to the same conclusion at the same time, turning equal shades of white. "A-Akaba-bane-san?"

"What is it, Ginji-kun?"

"It… it is possible that… there's another tracking device… in your panties?" he asked, stammering. Akabane could not help but notice that Ginji's hands were tightly pressed between his legs, and wondered if he was correct in guessing why Ginji would be sitting rod-straight like that.

"I would not know, Ginji-kun. Only you can feel the electrical charge given off by them."

Had it been possible for Ginji to lose any more color, he would have. "I… I have to touch… Akabane-san's panties?"

"Ginji, now it not the time for hesitation!" Ban shouted, still as white as could be as well. "Now is the time for action!"

Ginji jumped. "Hai… hai… Ban-chan!" He looked as if he might faint. Slowly, with one trembling hand, he reached out… drew closer… closer… and then released a sigh of relief. "No electrical buzz there!"

"Good. I'll work on losing them, then," Ban said, diving dangerously down another off-ramp. After much deft traffic maneuvering, it seemed to work and Fujimoto's men were soon lost in traffic. "Phew," Ban sighed.

"That was… exciting," Akabane mused, voice deadpan.

Ginji glanced over at Akabane, and then quickly looked away. His vest was covering everything that needed to be covered, but still left enough exposed that it was making him uncomfortable. "Ban-chan, can you open the window? It's hot back here," he whined, tugging on the neck of his shirt.

Akabane smirked audibly in response to Ginji's comment. Ban scowled and glared in the rear-view mirror. "So now what do we do with _it?_" he asked, as though he were talking about a bag of garbage.

"Ban-chan…"

"Well, obviously I can not go home until the matter of Fujimoto-san is resolved, since the presence of that tracker means that he knows where I live… unless you would like to let me handle this my way," he smiled, waving a scalpel briefly between his fingers.

"No, no, no! No more killing!" Ginji shouted, crossing his arms in a "you're out" position over his chest."

"Listening to him is the least you can do after he saved your life. After all, any killing you make after this point will eat away at his consciousness. Save the life of a murderer, become responsible for the deaths of the people he kills."

"Ban-chan!"

"Midou-kun is making an allusion to a very popular manga. A man- a doctor, if you wish to push the analogy- saves the life of a young boy who becomes a serial killer. Through a series of frames he becomes responsible for the boy's crimes. He was not referring to me at all. He would know that insulting me to my face is hazardous to one's health…"

Ginji broke out in a cold sweat as the car became a lightning rod of tension. Akabane's hands were tightly curled on his knees, fingers twitching in anticipation of a fight. Ban's hands tightened around the wheel, eyes glued to the rear-view mirror also in anticipation of a fight. The hostility in the air was so thick you could cut it with a knife, or more appropriately, with a scalpel.

"I can pull this car over," Ban threatened.

"Please do." Akabane smiled.

"No, no, no!" Ginji whined. "Stop fighting, Akabane-san, Ban-chan!"

The two let out deep breaths of air and settled back into their respective seats, Ban glaring out the front windshield and Akabane staring boredly out of the window. Ginji, not liking the tension, brightly made a suggestion. "It's a long ride back to the Honky Tonk and traffic is slow, so let's play a car game!"

"A car game?" Akabane and Ban asked in unison.

"Yeah, yeah. Natsumi-chan was telling me about the ones she used to play with her mother and father. Like… let's play spot a red car! First person to spot the red car gets a point!"

"Is it cheating if I make the cars red?" Akabane asked, pulling out a handful of scalpels. Ginji, in response, just kind of turned green while Akabane smiled.

Ban grunted. "Could this day get any worse?" he moaned to himself. Akabane was about to say something in response when suddenly the car jolted forward, causing both him and Ginji to fall out of their seats.

"What was that? Fujimoto!" Ginji asked, getting back up so fast that he smacked his head on the sun roof. "Ow ow ow!"

"Ginji, the sun roof was closed!"

"I figured that out!" he shouted back, rubbing his head. "Did something hit us from behind?" The car suddenly gave another violent jolt, and then the sound all of them dreaded hearing came- the sound of silence. The engine had quit.

"What do you know, Midou-kun? You were capable of stopping the car."

"Shut up!" Ban fumed, getting out and running back to the engine. As he pulled the compartment open, black smoke billowed out, causing him to cough and gag. It became clear immediately that they were not going anywhere anytime soon.

After a lot of pushing, Ban and Ginji managed to get the car over to the shoulder. Akabane had offered to help, but Ginji had felt it best that Akabane not try to push the car in high heels, panties, and an oversized men's vest. "Now what, Ban-chan?" Ginji asked.

"What other choice do we have? Call a tow truck."

"Ban-chan, we can't afford that…"

"I will pay for the tow truck, as thanks for services rendered…" Akabane offered.

"At least you're good for something," Ban muttered. "Ginji, get the cell phone and call a tow."

Ginji turned red in the face. "I knew I forgot something at the Honky Tonk…"

The two looked at one another, then at Akabane. "Do you…?"

"It is in the pocket of my coat, which is currently at the restaurant."

"Ah! It's not! I saved it!" Ginji cried. Ban's face brightened. "But… it's in the side car of Himiko's bike…" Ban's face fell again.

"Looks like there's no getting around it. We'll have to walk to the Honky Tonk. It's not far from here, and I don't have any yen to make a pay phone call with."

"What about Akabane-san? We can't leave her here in case Fujimoto's men come past!"

"We can't take it with us; it's barely wearing any clothing!" Ban argued back.

After a lot of arguing and clothes-swapping, the three finally found themselves walking down the shoulder of the road. Akabane was wearing Ginji's white shirt, an old shoelace tied around the middle in an attempt to make it look more like a dress. Ginji was wearing Ban's black tank top underneath his vest, and for the most part, Ban still looked as if he were dressed normally.

I can really tell she's not wearing a bra, Ginji thought to himself as he watched Akabane follow Ban down the stairs to the street below the overpass. Immediately, his face turned red and smacked himself in the face for thinking dirty thoughts about Akabane's breasts. Female or not, Akabane-san was still scary Akabane-san. He really, really hoped the clouds threatening rain overhead would hold off until they were under a roof. He had no desire to see Akabane in a wet T-shirt.

"Geeze, you're slow!" Ban prodded Akabane.

"Do you want to trade shoes?" Akabane asked in irritation. Balancing on three inch heels was obviously a new sensation for him, especially while walking down uneven city streets.

Ginji immediately ran up so he could stand between the two of them. "No fighting! We have to get to a phone!" He said, holding out his arms as if to keep two opposing boxers in their respective corners of the ring.

"I just thought of something. How is Jackal going to pay if Himiko has his wallet?"

"I assumed Himiko-chan would meet us at the Honky Tonk, where we would have your car towed, and I could pay then."

"You had better hope you're assuming right about that," Ban threatened, cautiously avoiding a lawn sprinkler that was doing a better job of washing the sidewalk than anything else.

"Ginji-kun, you are shivering," Akabane noted, changing the subject.

"I… I'm okay…" he answered. In truth, he'd been frozen when he'd gotten caught in the crossfire between Akabane and Ban's icy stares. If the sun hadn't been so bright, he might have transformed into a snowman right where he stood.

"I hope we arrive soon. I have to go to the potty," Akabane pointed out. Ginji snorted, trying to hold back a giggle. Akabane frowned. "What is so funny, Ginji-kun?"

"It's just that… you're always so serious, Akabane-san. Hearing you say potty was really funny!" Ginji giggled, covering his mouth.

Akabane's frown deepened. "I take it you see me as less threatening as a woman, and that is why you are laughing at me?" Ginji turned red in the face and quickened his pace so that he could walk protectively next to Ban, letting Akabane trail behind. Akabane was definitely not smiling anymore, and when Akabane was not shiny-happy, it was a far worse thing than when he was. Akabane was very confused and frustrated, as he hadn't changed inside. Why were people assuming he had because his outside was different?

The neighborhood was nice enough that they were not really attracting any bad attention, just a few salary men staring longingly after Akabane as she passed. "How in the world do guys that look like that get a girl who looks like that?" one whispered.

"Maybe she's their sister…"

After about half an hour of walking, Akabane finally spoke up. "The Honky Tonk is near, you said?" he asked. It was obvious from the way his steps were faltering that he was having trouble staying upright on his heels for that long.

"It's not much further. Only about two more miles," Ban shrugged. "What is the matter, the infamous Dr. Jackal can't take a little hike?"

"You can ride on my back again, Akabane-san, if your feet hurt…"

"That is a very kind offer, Ginji-kun, but I have been challenged now. I will walk the rest of the distance," Akabane said, nodding his head in acknowledgement to Ban.

Ban grunted. "Do as you want," he said, quickening his pace to make it intentionally harder for Akabane to follow. Ginji felt a tinge of pity for Akabane, but Akabane's own stubbornness was at fault. He'd offered a ride…

Another half hour passed before the heels finally got the better of Akabane. If he had not been so stubborn, he might have realized he could take them off and walk cautiously the rest of the way. However, so determined had he been to prove his prowess in walking in heels that he'd refused to admit that there was a limit to how long even the strongest could go walking in heels.

An uneven crack in the sidewalk caught his heel, and he was too tired to lift his legs high enough to get out. He stumbled and fell, sprawling himself on the sidewalk. "Akabane-san!" Ginji cried, running over.

Akabane sat up, shaking his head. "I am all right, Ginji-kun. I missteped… I did not even scrape up my knees," he answered, but his voice and even his smile looked tired.

"Don't be so stubborn, Akabane-san. I'll carry you the rest of the way," Ginji said, turning around and squatting down to make it easier for Akabane to climb onto his back.

Akabane found himself staring. Is this how weak I've become in this body, he wondered in his head. So weak I can not even walk for an hour without falling? He forced himself stubbornly to his own feet. "I do not need any help, Ginji-kun," he said, but staggered again upon attempting to walk forward.

Ginji jumped forward in alarm, arms outstretched. The good news was that he caught Akabane. The bad news was that he caught him from behind in such a way that each hand was tightly squeezing one breast. He immediately released them, nearly dropping Akabane in the process. "I'm so sorry, Akabane-san!"

"Nevermind, I am getting used to it," Akabane sighed. "I have been kidnapped, crushed behind a door, stripped naked in the backseat of a car, and more today. One little accidental squeeze will not bother me."

"I'm glad you're not mad, Akabane-san."

"It is not my nature to get mad." He paused, and then smiled deliciously. "It is my nature to get even."

Ginji swallowed nervously. "Come on, Akabane-san, please let me give you a ride…"

"Oh, for the love of… look, we're never going to get anywhere if you keep doing the whole 'Oh, Akabane-san, I'll carry you!' 'No, I could not!' 'Oh, but I must!' 'No, no!' thing," Ban commented, prancing about like an idiot to accentuate his point.

"Ban-chan, stop it," Ginji said angrily. He adored his partner to the point where he'd throw his life away for him, but sometimes he just went too far. Ginji didn't like it when Ban went too far with making fun of him.

"I do not want to be the thing that drives a wedge between the ironclad partnership that is the Get Backers," Akabane finally said, trying to quote Himiko's exact words as best he could. "That would spoil my fun. I will leave."

Right as Akabane was turning around, a small red car pulled up and honked. "Hevn-san!" Ginji cried happily, bouncing up and down on the sidewalk with joy as the driver rolled down the window and waved at them.

A moment later, the three were in Hevn's car, heading for the Honky Tonk. "You're a life-saver, Hevn-san."

"Especially since it turns out that we walked past the Honky Tonk a half an hour ago, but we did not know it because we were one street too far to the South," Akabane said, irritated. He was sitting back, high heels in his lap, looking over his swollen and bruised legs.

"Hey, either of you could have pointed out that we were on the wrong street!" Ban shouted in anger, trying to absolve himself of blame. "I just can't wait to get back to the Honky Tonk so we can call a tow truck."

Hevn pulled up in front of the building, leading the way as the three dragged along behind her. "There you are!" Himiko snapped, looking up from her drink. "I've been waiting for you for over an hour. I was afraid Fujimoto had recaptured you."

Ginji came over and flopped down next to Himiko on the bar. Ban flopped down next to Ginji, and then put his feet up so that the last available bar seat was taken up. Akabane looked at him, then down at his feet, then up at Ban's face again. Akabane said nothing, but walked around them in the tense silence that followed. "Where are my clothes, Lady Poison?"

She handed him the folded pile of his possessions. He looked down at them, and then frowned for a second before looking over at a nearby table, upon which Natsumi had piled clean white tablecloths. "I will be right back."

Akabane disappeared into the bathroom for a moment. When he emerged, he smiled and handed Ginji back his shirt. "Thank you for sharing, Ginji-kun."

Ginji stared, realizing that leaving his jaw hanging open wasn't exactly polite but unable to do otherwise. "Akabane-san, are you wearing a table cloth dress?"

"It was good enough for Scarlett O'Hara, so it is good enough for me," he argued with a shrug.

"You're mixing up your movie references," Ban pointed out. "That dress was made out of curtains.".

"This place does not have curtains that would make attractive clothing," Akabane shot back. "And I have more pressing concerns than what house wares I happen to be wearing. For example, I have no place to sleep tonight." He looked over at Himiko. "Lady Poison…?"

"No way, my apartment is too small," she said. Akabane knew she really meant that she wouldn't spend a night sleeping in the same apartment as a monster like him from the tone of her voice, even if she didn't dare say it.

"How about you, Ginji-kun?"

"There's no room for anyone but Ginji and myself in our apartment," Ban snapped.

"But Ban-chan, we sleep in the ca-" Ginji ended up stopped as Ban pummeled him in the forehead with a fist.

"Speaking of cars, here's the tow truck," Ban pointed out. "I'll go with them."

"What about me, Ban-chan?"

"There is only room for one person to ride in the truck. Besides, you wanted to save Jackal. You stay here and spend some _quality_ time with him."

"My, my, will that not be fun, Ginji-kun?" Akabane smirked, eyes bright.

"Ban-chaaaaaaaaaaaaan," Ginji wept at his rapidly disappearing partner.

"You can stay upstairs tonight," Paul said, not looking up for that paper he was seemingly always reading. "There's a cot in the room next to the computer room."

"I'll go back to my place and bring you a change of clothes," Hevn said, standing up. "I have to give Natsumi-chan a ride home now anyway."

"Thank you, Hevn-san!" Natsumi said, running out of the kitchen with her book bag. "See you tomorrow, Ginji-san!" Before Ginji could say a word, the two girls melted out the door.

Himiko stood up. "I have an actual job tonight."

"Not you too, Himiko-chan!" Ginji begged, tugging on her shirt. If she left, it would be only him, Master, … and Akabane.

"I'm sorry, but work comes first. Wouldn't you agree, Dr. Jackal?"

"Of course," Akabane said, nodding and tipping his hat. He was very grateful to have it back again.

Ginji whimpered like a dog that no one had remembered to walk all day, creeping down in his seat. Look on the bright side, Ginji, his internal monologue said. You walked Akabane home alone yesterday, and this time, Paul is here. Nothing scary is going to happen at all…

Right then, the first flash of lightning illuminated the Honky Tonk and the first peal of thunder raced across the sky. "Oh my," Akabane said, looking out the window as the rain went from zero to buckets. "It has been a terribly rainy week. It is a good thing you did not go with your Ban-chan, you would be soaked!"

"Yeah… yeah. I guess you're right, Akabane-san," Ginji said, swallowing hard.

"You know, Ginji-kun… lightning makes me think of you," he said, smiling. A second flash of lightning cast frightening shadows across his features. Ginji shivered. At least Paul is here at least Paul is here at least…

"Master! Why are you putting on your coat?" Ginji asked in alarm.

"I didn't buy gas for the backup generators, and this storm looks like it is going to turn nasty. I'll be back as fast as I can. I'm going to lock up and leave a temporary out message. You two stay here and guard the place until I get back."

Ginji turned white as Paul vanished out the door. Wait, wait, no reason to be afraid. I walked Akabane-san home last night alone and nothing happened. Why should it be different because we're in the Honky Tonk, with the lights on no less? Yes. No reason to worry at all.

Ginji stood up and nervously rubbed the back of his head. "It's so quiet in here with only the sound of the storm. Do you like music, Akabane-san? I'll go turn on the radio. We can listen for storm warnings then," Ginji stammered, turning on the radio. At least it was better than sitting in silence with Akabane. He only realized then that the street had been different- he'd been out in the open with Akabane, where anyone could see if Akabane had tried something. Here inside the Honky Tonk… here was different.

Ginji wiped a bit of sweat of his brow. Akabane wouldn't try anything, even in the Honky Tonk, would he? Akabane looked up and smiled, showing sharp teeth, as though he could read Ginji's thoughts. Then, with a very brilliant flash of lightning… the lights went dead.

8


	12. Sushi

Ginji's heart stopped dead in its tracks. "AAAAAAAAAH!" he screamed like a baby.

"Ginji-kun, get a hold of yourself!" Akabane demanded from somewhere in the darkness. "Screaming like an infant over a little power outage does not suit the thunder emperor." With that, the room brightened as though someone had lit a blue candle. Akabane held a small glowing ball of scalpels between his hands, illuminating the main room.

"Sorry, Akabane-san… it caught me by surprise."

Akabane shook his head in amazement. "You really do keep me from being bored, Ginji-kun." Akabane looked up and smiled. "So it is only the two of us. Alone. In the dark."

Ginji was beginning to sweat heavily. Akabane noticed and continued talking. "The last time we were alone in the dark, it led to some unusual consequences."

"I'm sorry, Akabane-san. I didn't mean to!" he whimpered.

"I did not mind all that much. It kept me from being bored, after all," Akabane smiled brightly, the glow from his scalpels casting his long shadow up against the wall. "I am jealous of you and your Midou-kun, Ginji-kun."

"Huh?" Ginji asked, surprised. Why the sudden change of topic?

"The way your Midou-kun always comes to save you." He hesitated. This topic wasn't the kind of thing he'd normally open up about, but then again, nothing had seemed normal lately. "I am even jealous of the way you two eat sushi together, fighting one another for the last morsel. The way the one who ends up with only the plastic grass will make a tragically sad face, but the other knows that it's not really sadness. I do not think I could ever experience such a feeling."

"You're wrong, Akabane-san!" Ginji said firmly. "Ban-chan and I… we complete one another. We fill up the holes in one another's hearts, like… like the way the meat and vegetables fill up the hole in the sticky rice!" Ginji said, proud of his sushi analogy.

"It must be wonderful to have someone to eat sushi with."

"Akabane-san…" This is my chance, Ginji thought. I can convince Akabane-san to stop killing if I be his friend. "Why don't we eat sushi together sometime?"

Akabane looked up, and less than a second later the glow from his scalpels had gone out. "Akabane-san?" Ginji cried in alarm. "Akabane-san, are you all right? Akabane-san?"

Ginji remained frozen, rooted to his spot. He couldn't see in the dark. The sound of rain tumbling down mean that he couldn't hear Akabane's movements, either. Did I say something wrong? Oh God Oh God Oh God, I said something that made him mad and he's going to kill me and I won't even be able to see him coming…

Another flash of lightning lit up the bar just long enough for Ginji to see that Akabane was no longer standing anywhere near where he'd been when the light from the scalpels had gone out. Ginji strained his ears, but he could hear no movement.

He was terrified. He moved one leg, preparing to run for the door. No- no wait. Breathe, Ginji, breathe, he thought. Something was beginning to dawn on him. Akabane-san is testing me. If I show I am afraid, he'll know my offer wasn't sincere. He'll know I'm still really afraid of him… and he'll kill me.

Ginji lowered his arms. "Akabane-san, you wouldn't stab a man in the dark without giving him a good fight, right? It's not your style. I'm going to stand right here, Akabane-san." He hesitated. "I trust you."

There was no response, although he thought he heard something brush against one of the tables to his right. "Akabane-san, please stop this. We can't eat sushi together if I can't see to get it out of the kitchen." His heart felt like it was going to jump into his chest. His legs felt like a combination of rubber and the desire to burn rubber out of there. He realized running was definitely the wrong option. He'd seen that he couldn't outrun Akabane from their experiences in the Infinite Castle. His only hope was that Akabane would come to his senses and stop being ridiculous.

He felt a presence at his back. "If you had run away, I would have killed you." A smallish hand rested on his shoulder. "Let's eat sushi together sometime, Ginji-kun."

0-

Time passed faster than it should have, and Ginji found himself needing to use the bathroom very, very badly. He looked over at Akabane, who seemed to have drifted off to a happy sleep with her coat wrapped about her body. "Do you want me to get you something from downstairs, Akabane-san?" he asked.

Akabane opened one eye, half-awake. "Perhaps later… some tea…" she yawned. Ginji nodded and left her upstairs, slipping silently downstairs in the dark.

"Gotta potty potty potty, gotta potty," he whispered as he thudded down the stairs in the darkness. After emerging from the bathroom, Ginji yawned and stretched. Boy, was he tired. Without warning, the front door suddenly flew open, and a mysterious black shape loomed in the doorway. Ginji recognized it instantly- it was the blob! "IEEEEEEEEEEE!" Ginji screamed, falling over in terror.

"Ginji?" Ban asked from beneath his rain poncho. "What in hell are you doing?"

Ginji relaxed, temporarily returning to normal. "What took you so long, Ban-chan?" He asked, breathing out with a great sigh of relief.

"The highways were horrible! It took ten minutes to go a kilometer. I could have walked faster," Ban shouted over the roar of the wind. "Let's get inside rather than discussing this out here."

The two stepped inside, Ban removing his soaked poncho and hanging it up on a hook. It was a cheap plastic thing that the tow driver had given him, Ban explained as he brushed the water out of his hair. Then, Ban looked over at Ginji, frowning. He grabbed Ginji by the shoulders, and without so much as a word of warning, threw Ginji out into the pouring rain.

Ginji immediately came running back in, his shorts soaked absolutely through. As they were the only things he was currently wearing, it would make sense that they would be the articles of his clothing to get soaked. "Ban-chan, what was THAT for?" Ginji asked angrily, brushing water out of his ruined hair.

"If I had to get soaked in the rain, you have to get soaked in the rain. Besides, you stunk like sweaty armpits."

"Like you should talk, Ban-chan! You shower in public fountains!"

"Never mind that, you," he snapped. Then, to quickly change the subject, "Where's Jackal?"

"Upstairs, watching the rain. Akabane-san likes to look at the rain."

Ban looked around the darkened Honky Tonk. "I wonder what _is_ taking the power companies so long. They're normally so punctual… Ne, Ginji? If the power stays out much longer, the stuff in Master's fridge is going to start to melt. We should eat some of it before it makes a mess. Out of kindness to him, so he won't have to clean it up."  
Ginji grinned through an exhausted yawn. "Of course, Ban-chan. It is only the right thing to do."

To Be Continued-


	13. Back from Extended Hiatus

Akabane's arm reached out while her mind remained unconscious, slowly feeling around the empty spot on the table. When it found nothing, one pale purple eye slipped open. "Ginji? Ginji-kun?" Akabane asked, slowly sitting up. Oh, that was right. He'd gone downstairs to go to the bathroom. Where was he? He should have been back by now, Akabane though as she sat up fully, swinging bare feet onto the wooden floor.

As he sat up, he realized he was instinctively holding the blanket over his breasts- her breasts? He had decided- she had decided to accept this female body, at least for now, but it would take awhile for her to adjust to thinking of herself as female instead of male.

Slender, bare feet hit the cold wooden floor of the upstairs room. "Ginji-kun?" Akabane asked, barely able to remain conscious, searching the area with her eyes. The lights were still out, inserting a slight sense of worry into her heart. The power company didn't usually take so long to get the lights working again. Was something very wrong?

It was too dark to see anything, except when occasional flashes of lightning would come through the window and allow her to see vague shapes in the room. She did not, however, see Ginji. Where was he and where was the tea he'd promised to bring her?

Fighting her exhaustion, she tugged on the knots holding her tablecloth dress in place to make sure it was firmly attached to her body before padding towards the hallway, hands outstretched to feel for the doorframe. "This is ridiculous," Akabane finally announced out loud to no one in particular, lighting up a handful of glowing scalpels. The light didn't go far, but it was at least better than groping around in the darkness like a blind man.

In the slight glow of her knives, Akabane suddenly realized that she was not alone. Someone was standing at the end of the hallway. "Ginji-kun? Is that you?" she asked, leaning her weight against the doorframe. She was exhausted, and using what little energy she had left to manifest her knives in order to see.

A flash of lightning in the window behind the other person suddenly illuminated their outline. Akabane's fingers curled tighter around the doorframe, gripping firmly while her eyes narrowed in hostility. That was neither the outline of Ginji-kun nor Midou-kun. That was the outline of someone in a hooded cloak… just like the person who had been responsible for her transformation.

Akabane launched the blades she had ready at the form, which in truth was not the brightest idea for Akabane had no idea if they had actually struck their target or not when they embedded themselves neatly in the far wall.

"A very good shot," a woman's voice purred, coming from somewhere down the darkened hallway.

"Who are you and what do you want with me?" Akabane asked, drawing up another handful of blades at the ready. For a second, her knees weakened and felt as if they might buckle. Damn it, she didn't have enough strength to keep up this fight for much longer.

If you scream, Ginji-kun would come to save you, a voice mocked inside her head. No, Akabane argued back with herself, pushing up against the frame of the door for support. Just because I have this woman's body does not mean I am going to scream like a helpless waif for the big strong man to come save me. I'm still Doctor Jackal, even if I no longer look it.

"Haven't you figured it out by now, yet?" the woman's voice asked, chuckling slightly in response. "You never knew your biological parents, did you?"

"I do not see what that has to do with anything," Akabane answered, taking a slight step backwards. If she could get to a chair, she could sit down and rely on her long-range attacks to protect herself.

"Haven't you seen the resemblance yet, child?" Suddenly, the woman was directly in front of Akabane, a smile that was more like a leer stretched across her angular face. "I am your mother."

Akabane lashed out with the blades and jumped back, despite finding herself on uneasy footing. She was so tired… why was she so tired? It was as if all the energy had been sapped right out of her body. "That is a lie. What reason would my supposed mother have for putting a curse on me?"

The woman appeared to her left, pushing Akabane over onto her side before she could react. The blades she had been holding went skittering across the floor, their light flickering as though the scalpels themselves were threatening to go out. Akabane quickly started lifting herself back up off her stomach, only to hear the enemy sigh, "Powers, bind her arms."

Before she could react, both her arms twisted behind her back, wrists crossed, and she fell flat on her stomach. A high heeled boot appeared in Akabane's field of view, dangerously close to her face. "Such a weak spell never would have worked on you if you were at full strength, but you are not." She sighed again. "I apologize for having to tie you up like this, but it was obvious you weren't going to stop long enough for me to explain if I didn't."

She picked Akabane up off the floor and sat her down on top of a pile of boxes. Another flash of lightning illuminated the room, revealing the other woman's face- and for a horrifying moment, Akabane saw the smile on her face. He knew that cruel smile, the kind of smile that made your blood turn to ice despite how pleasant of facial expression it might have been on anyone else. It was her own smile.

"My darling daughter, I did not put a curse on you- I removed a curse from you," she said, pulling up her own box and sitting down. "Oh, please, stop glaring at me like that. I can sense the faces you're making even if I can't see them. I'll let your arms go if you promise to be a good girl," she said, waving a hand and causing the binding spell to release.

Akabane rubbed her bruised wrists. "I am afraid I do not follow you."

"Don't you feel more at home in this body than you ever did as a man? Don't you feel like you belong like this? Don't you feel like it's possible that someone might like you like this? Someone like that innocent blonde boy-"

"I will not have Ginji-kun involved in my fights," Akabane answered, threatening the woman at point-blank with a fist full of scalpels. "If this is a fight between you and I, it stays between you and I."

"Oh, protective, aren't we?" she smirked. "Do you want me to have to bind your arms again, young lady?" Even in Akabane's weakened state, she doubted the spell would work again now that he expected it. She'd only managed to catch him the first time because she'd caught him unaware, whether he realized that or not. "The men who took you from me didn't want a female warrior. They wanted a male warrior to continue on their bloodline and tradition. So they put this spell over your body, a spell to transform you into a man. I merely removed it and returned you to your natural state."

"I do not believe you," Akabane answered shortly, hands folded tensely in her lap. "Your story falls apart in that the ones who raised me never honestly intended for me to become a warrior."

"How can you say that wasn't their intent all along? It happened, didn't it? You don't have to answer that question right away. Just think about it. You know that you've been feeling it all along- that you might belong this way. That this might be your real per-" Her words were cut short, as she had to move quickly out of the way of several scalpels that embedded themselves in the wall.

She glanced back at Akabane. Akabane's fingers were losing color from the pressure being put on them in her attempt to keep from losing her grip on the wall. "You don't have much strength left, even I can see that. Why not just take some time to think about it?" The woman smiled. "I'll be back when you're rested." With that, her form seemed to melt into the thin air.

Akabane looked with great interest upon the spot she had vanished from, then released her grip and toppled over onto her side, staring off into inky blackness. The grains of the wood floor were rough, and she gave herself a splinter in her attempts to get back up. If she'd had an energy meter attached to her body, measuring her powers, it would have read "no voltage".

I do not even have the strength to get up, Akabane thought miserably to herself. Am I really this weak as a woman? She rolled over onto her side and lay there. Ginji-kun will come up and find you, her mind said. No, wait, that wasn't right. She would never look weak in front of the Thunder Emperor, male or female. Not if she wanted to one day fight him at the limits of her power.

Unfortunately, not even the strongest of minds can conquer weakness of the body, so she ended up sprawled out on the floor, lost in a deep layer of sleep that only those special beings recharging their damaged powers were capable of reaching.

Meanwhile, back downstairs, Ban glanced over at Ginji. He gripped his partner by the hair, pulling his face out of the ice cream. He was absolutely coated in it from hairline to chin. On top of that, he was sound asleep and snoring.

Ban frowned. He'd never known Ginji to choose sleep over food, ever. He pushed Ginji aside just far enough that when Ginji toppled back over, he landed with his face on the counter instead of in his food. It would not be good to have their partnership ended by Ginji drowning in a bowl of caramel swirl.

He cast his next disapproving glance upon the overhead lights, still blackened. Even Ginji looked creepy in only the glow of the single charged flashlight they had between them on the table, and Jackal was still somewhere in the building. He didn't want to take a chance with that monster in the dark, alone with an unconscious and vulnerable Ginji on the sidelines.What could possibly be taking the power company so long?

As Ban pondered the lack of power, the witch sisters walked through the parking lot of the lavish hotel where they had been conducting their operations. "I do not understand," the sister less involved in the plot grunted. "Why did you not seize her while she was weak? She may not cooperate with us, given the time to recharge her abilities."

The other sister looked down into the glowing silver box she was holding cradled in her arms as she got into the passenger seat of the car the two shared. Inside, a miniature Ban made of straw was looking upward, towards where a miniature straw Akabane lay unconscious. Beside him sat a snoring, twitching straw Ginji.

"Just drive to where I've told you, sister," the witch sister smiled. She reached down, placed two skeleton-thin fingers around the straw Ban's waist, and smiled as she began to guide him.

In the Honky Tonk, Ban picked up his flashlight and headed for what appeared to be a broom closet. Inside, hidden, were the stairs that would take him either down to what he assumed was the Honky Tonk's storage basement, or upstairs to the computer room and the extra closet. Ginji had mentioned Jackal still being in the building, and Ban wanted to know what that half-gender thing was up to.

The stairs creaked in protest, loud enough to make their whines heard about the pounding sound of the rain. The door to the upstairs stuck, making Ban worry for just a second that Jackal had found a way to block it. He rammed his shoulder into the door, causing it to fly open and spill him on the floor.

He dropped his flashlight, the impact causing it to switch off. He could hear it rolling across the floor, even if he could not see it. Swearing, Ban crawled towards where he could hear it rolling. It should be right about here, he thought as he reached out.

He was terribly surprised to find a mass of something soft and slightly firm, like a good pillow, in his grip. What was a pillow doing lying on the ground? He continued to grope around until he managed to find his flashlight. As he flicked it on, he realized that what he had a firm grip on was not a pillow- but Akabane's chest.

He jumped away, fully expecting another groin full of blades. When nothing happened, he realized that he should probably start breathing again. He scooted slowly back towards where the he/she lay, poking Akabane repeatedly in the side with the end of the flashlight cautiously until he realized that Akabane was not going to wake up.

"Hey, you," he said angrily, shaking Akabane's shoulder. "Don't you dare need CPR! It's just my luck that the lights would come on right then, and no one would ever believe my story!"

"Stop shaking me, Ginji-kun. I want to sleep," Akabane muttered, curling slightly up into what could be called a Bane-ball.

Ban grunted. Not only was he displeased with having been called Ginji, but something was beginning to tickle in the back of his brain. Something that said that the situation wasn't quite right. Ginji was sleeping instead of eating- that never happened. Jackal, completely and totally knocked out? That didn't happen, either.

"I suppose I can't just leave you on the floor," he sighed to himself, lifting Akabane up. "OOOOF!" he cried once he managed to get a good grip on the body. "For the love of- for a skinny girl, you're heavy!" he grunted, straining and trying not to break his back as he held Akabane. "How many kilograms of weapons HAVE you shoved in there?" He glared down at her chest, where he'd wedged the flashlight. "I suppose you can carry even more with the extra room in there."

He carried Akabane back into the supply room, unceremoniously flopping her down onto the table. As he was straightening out and popping the aches out of his back, he caught a deep sniff of a strange scent hovering thickly in the air of the room. He recognized it instantly- it was the musky stink he'd recognized clinging to Ginji.

He knew that scent from somewhere else. Once or twice, on certain nights that he cared not to share the mental details of, he'd smelled it clinging to the inside of his car in the morning. He knew that scent, oh yes… but no, no, Ginji couldn't have. Ginji _wouldn't_ have.

There had to be other proof. He wasn't just going to assume that Ginji would- not with that thing. He wouldn't. After all, Ginji was supposed to be his partner. His best friend. Closer to him than anyone else, he knew Ginji inside and out, and he just knew that Ginji wouldn't. Ginji wouldn't go behind his back like that, no!

He began moving around the room, being quieter than he probably had to. After all, Akabane was definitely out for the count for the time being. Finally, when he was about ready to give up his search and blissfully admit that he had been wrong, his flashlight beam fell upon the trashcan.

A small, unassuming piece of plastic was all that he needed to realize that the worst case scenario were true. It was a wrapper, and Ban didn't need any help at all to realize what it had once held. He was grateful he hadn't found the actual object, or else the rubbish can would have become his personal vomit bucket.

Seething with rage, he twitched his hand in the general direction of where Akabane was lying. "I could crush your windpipe in while you slept," he said darkly to no one in particular, his voice sounding particularly alien against a background of rolling thunder. "But Ginji wouldn't want me to. Not that Ginji seems to care about respecting my wishes," he snorted. Wait, wait, that wasn't fair. You never made 'you shall not have romantic relationships with homicidal half-women' a condition of their friendship, his mind argued back.

How could that not be an unspoken term of their partnership, Ban answered the voice in his head. Ginji knows I would never approve of this. Did he think of my feelings before he thought of his hormones?

Well, perhaps you are not thinking about Ginji's feelings, the voice in his head bantered back. Ban's arms dropped to his sides. This was something that did not make him happy in the least, and something he and Ginji were going to have to have a very serious 'discussion' about, but it was not something to kill anyone over. True, Akabane probable deserved to die, but it was not his place at that time to be the executioner.

As he started to walk away, he felt something gripping tightly to his wrist. "Don't leave, Ginji-kun," Akabane muttered, sounding just awake enough to speak and not much else. In that moment, a flash of inspiration came over Ban's mind. She thinks I'm Ginji. If I can get her talking, I can make her confess to seducing poor Ginji. Then I can use her words to slap Ginji in the face. That will teach him a sharp and painful lesson about letting his hormones get the better of his brain.

He sat down beside her, grinning in the darkness like the cat that ate the canary. "Don't worry," he said, bending his voice to mimic Ginji as best he could. The fact that the two had lived in very close quarters with one another for as long as they had made this easier. "I will not leave. In fact, I want to talk."

"Too tired to talk," Akabane yawned, releasing her grip on his wrist. "Why does your voice sound funny?"

"I think I am catching something. I went and walked in the rain. To cool down, after we-" he paused, hoping the exhausted Akabane would finish the sentence.

He/she didn't. Instead, Akabane laid a hand on his thigh. "Ginji-kun, won't you hold me while I sleep?"

Ban rolled his eyes, but if that's what it took to get a confession, then that's what he had to do. He let Akabane put his/her arms around his neck with only a slight sigh, which she didn't seem to hear. Only when he put an arm around her back to keep her from wobbling around did he realize, to his slight horror, that she wasn't wearing the sheet.

His face turned a brilliant red involuntarily, although no one could see it in the dark. He had a very nice chest pushed up against his body, and there were no clothes covering it. He certainly did NOT want to be that close to a naked Jackal in any situation, but he couldn't help it. Perhaps he could just pretend he didn't actually know who they were attached to- or think of them as attached to no one, just two floating pieces of flesh in mid air.

Okay, scratch that last description. That was pretty creepy. Ban was still musing over whether the boobs were creepier attached to Jackal or attached to no one when she threw her arms around his neck. "I am so tired, Ginji-kun."

"And why do you suppose you are tired?" he asked, trying to sound like Ginji when Ginji was joking. He'd pry that confession out of her thin lips yet. Oh, but Ginji would be so humiliated when he found out Ban knew his secret. Well, that would teach him to keep that kind of secret.

Downstairs, Ginji had pried his eyes open. "Ban-chan?" he asked, upon finding that he was in the dark. "Ban-chan? Master?" He glanced around.

A brilliant flash of lightning illuminated the main room, allowing him to see that the door to the upstairs was open. Concerned, Ginji stood up and moved towards it. "Akabane-san…" he muttered under his breath. If she was awake… what if she'd gotten in a fight with Ban? That would be bad!

Ginji grabbed his still slightly damp shirt off the peg where it had been hanging, throwing it over his head and thudding up the stairs. He had to make sure that Akabane-san was okay, and by extension, that Ban-chan was okay. After all, if one was fine, it likely meant that the other was as well.

Ban was ready to throw a tantrum from sheer frustration. All Akabane wanted to do was snuggle and sleep, and seemed to almost know the exact words he wanted to hear out of her, and was thus avoiding saying them. Damn it, he thought, Jackal manages to piss me off even when he/she's not trying to!

She had adjusted her position against his side. "What's wrong, Ginji-kun?" she asked, still exhausted. "You are tense. Why don't you lie down?" Unfortunately for her, the similarity in Ban and Ginji's build didn't allow her to tell that she was being deceived, and she was too tired to notice the subtle differences in Ban's voice that would have given him away as a Ginji impersonate.

The feel of her chest bumping against his was just too tempting. Well, she thought he was Ginji, right? What harm could one innocent little squeeze do? He reached down, his fingers finding their intended target-

Right as Ban's hand wandered to where it shouldn't have been, Ginji pulled open the door to the room where he'd last left Akabane. The witch sister, watching the straw figures move about under her command in her silver box, released her hold on the electricity right then, causing the room to fill up with light as power flooded back into the Honky Tonk.

Ginji stared at Ban, his jaw slack. Akabane also stared up at Ban, purple eyes blinking as it took a moment for her tired brain to process the information. Ban stared, horrified, at Ginji. He was unable to move, even to get his hand off of where it shouldn't have been.

"Ban-chan, you-" Ginji started. His words were cut off when Akabane suddenly lashed out, raking an entire fist full of scalpels across Ban's face.

Ban howled, falling off the table and covering his face. "Ban-chan!" Ginji screamed, running to his wounded partner. He looked up at Akabane, holding her tablecloth over her chest, a look of twisted rage on her face as blood dripped down her fingers. The look on Ginji's face, however, was one of pure hurt.

"Akabane-san, how could you?" Ginji asked, his voice barely a whimper of protest.

Akabane froze. Her body was shaking slightly. She knew she had no more energy of her own and yet she was managing to remain upright. There was pressure under her ribcage, as though an invisible force were holding her upright.

"Of course- of course you would take his side." Even though he was the one molesting her. Even though he'd tried to trick her into thinking he was Ginji. Why? Why would he do that? Unless he'd intended to-

Ginji leaned over Ban, pressing his partner's wounded face into his chest. A few drops of blood fell, staining red on his shirt and pants. "Akabane-san, I-"

He didn't get a chance to finish his sentence. She'd grabbed what remained of her clothes and charged for the window at the far end of the room, breaking through it and landing on the balcony outside. Then, faster than the human eye could blink, she had disappeared out into the night.

Ginji looked after her and started to move, when Ban reached up and gripped his shoulder. Ginji's body sagged in resignation. Ban-chan came first, no matter what, and precious Ban-chan had great injuries that had to be attended to. He'd go after Akabane then.


End file.
